Although I read my fair share of crime fiction, and have been known to stay in a hotel from time to time, I don’t often think of hotels as venues of vice. This welcome summer read suggests it’s time to think again. The first in a new series from a debutant Icelandic author, The Hotel Manager’s Guide to Murder is an appealing combination of the light-hearted and the angry, of the farcical and the dramatic, of the fresh and the familiar. Erlendur Arason is clearly a writer to watch, and Quentin Bates’ sure-footed translation makes early winter Reykjavík the ideal getaway for drought-weary British readers.

Let’s start with the fresh and the familiar. We’re used to Nordic Noir that packs a punch and stands up for the powerless and the ordinary. And, especially through the work of Antti Tuomainen, we’re used to protagonists who are comically out of their depth. So step forward Torfi, the front of house manager at a swanky luxury hotel, who is about to be fired by corporate financial apparatchiks until, in his desperation, he blurts out something which they misunderstand. Torfi gets a promotion which is great as he and his wife are really hard up. Equally welcome is the occasional hard cash in a brown envelope. But – and this won’t be a huge surprise given the book’s title – then there’s a murder, and the folks who have been paying Torfi because of his supposed knowledge of the scams they’re playing recruit him to Team Coverup. Of course, he had had no such knowledge. So he’s on Team Catchup at the same time,

Poor Torfi. All he wanted was to negotiate his way through the choppy waters of his domestic life. His wife isn’t a fan of his daughter; his daughter isn’t a fan of his stepsons; his ex-wife redefines what it is to be vindictive. But now he’s having to get rid of bodies and try to find a way into Iceland’s underworld and be the person his colleagues believe him to be. Yet, even as he makes the call to commission violence and intimidation, we side with him and hope he’ll escape from the other side in a way that enables him to retain some semblance of integrity.

It isn’t quite the case that everyone’s on the fiddle, but there’s a sense of a system being worked by all. Torfi knows all the tricks that you can try when you’re front of house – he played many of them when he was younger. But Arason is quite clear that these misdeeds are small fry when compared to the outrages performed from the executive suite. Quite content to throw their staff, their peers and even their bosses under the proverbial, the management class is not to be trusted. Hopefully it is not too much of a spoiler to reveal that the eponymous murder is carried out by someone who is very senior indeed and that the whole corporate structure may be a money laundering front for the mafia. By contrast, the junior staff work the system for themselves but also for the benefit of others, such as the homeless folk who are provided with porridge each morning. All of them work in an industry where improvisation is often necessary. Fortunately, we learn that If there’s a skill needed when dealing with the consequences of a murder, then improvisation probably it.

Spiky, weary but also hopeful, this novel gives us something a little different. And if you take it on holiday, keep it visible in the hotel bar and be prepared for some raised eyebrows.

Thanks to Blekverk for the review copy and to Ewa Sherman for the blog tour invitation.