THE GIRL WHO DIED

Narrator Amanda Redman's cool alto delivery is a good steadying medium for this distinctly uneven tale. Unlike the author's popular Nordic noir crime novels, this one-off aspires to something like a Shirley Jackson horror story, but unlike Jackson's frightening psychological traps based on known truths about human behavior, this one seems simply a jumble of genres. Una, whose life in Reykjavik has ground to a lonely standstill, accepts a job in a stunningly isolated village, population 10, as teacher to the town's two children. Why does she stay when one of her students has died, no one in town wants her there any more, she's bewildered and lonely, and the house where she boards is haunted? These are good questions. Maybe a little too good. B.G. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine [Published: JUNE 2021]