{"id":5919,"date":"2024-09-03T06:49:31","date_gmt":"2024-09-03T13:49:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=5919"},"modified":"2024-09-03T06:50:14","modified_gmt":"2024-09-03T13:50:14","slug":"ragnar-jonasson-death-at-the-sanitorium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/ragnar-jonasson-death-at-the-sanitorium\/","title":{"rendered":"Ragnar Jonasson: Death at the Sanitorium"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/ragnar.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-5920 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/ragnar-197x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"197\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/ragnar-197x300.jpg 197w, https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/ragnar.jpg 658w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 197px) 100vw, 197px\" \/><\/a>Author Jonasson, an Icelandic fan of Agatha Christie from a child, had read all the available books translated by the time he was 17.\u00a0 At that point, craving more, he simply went to the publisher and asked if he himself could translate more of her previously untranslated titles.\u00a0 They agreed, and Jonasson was treated to a master class in plot, structure, character and setting as he did his work.\u00a0 As evidenced by his own books, the lessons certainly took.\u00a0 Like Christie\u2019s, his books are perfectly structured, have memorably distinctive characters and always feature an evocative setting.\u00a0 Oh, and they are also short, another valuable lesson he gleaned from Agatha.<\/p>\n<p>His latest brilliant, intelligent, compelling effort, <em>Death at The Sanitorium,<\/em> is set in the titular building that had previously been used for TB patients.\u00a0 By 1983, when much of the narrative takes place, the site is pretty empty but still kept functional as a research facility with a skeleton staff while the government decides how to dispose of it. One of the nurses, Tinna, is an early riser who always arrives first (thereby gaining overtime at the beginning of the day rather than the end).\u00a0 One morning when she enters the building something seems off \u2013 and indeed, when she goes to check in her supervisor\u2019s office, she finds the woman dead, several of her fingers cut off.<\/p>\n<p>The investigation begins, and as readers, we are also sequentially reading a part of the story that takes place in 2012, centered around Helgi, a young man who has decided to investigate the now 30-year-old case for his master\u2019s thesis.\u00a0 Helgi also has something troubling going on with his girlfriend, who wants him to remain in Reykjavik instead of returning to the UK as he had planned, a contentious point between them and for much of the book. Other than investigating this old crime, Helgi\u2019s plans remain up in the air, providing another mysterious thread to the story.<\/p>\n<p>He\u2019s a good investigator, however, and interviews most of the people involved who are still alive.\u00a0 In true golden age fashion, there\u2019s a very tight group of suspects, and questions remain about the initial resolution of the case.\u00a0 It\u2019s true the crimes stopped but most concerned aren\u2019t completely sure the outcome was the correct one. Jonasson also takes the reader inside the lives of the sanitorium staff \u2013 nurses, doctors, the building caretaker \u2013 and illuminates their lives, past and present.<\/p>\n<p>Jonasson is such a good storyteller that I was unsure of the culprit until the very end of the novel, though, again in classic fashion, the reader is given enough information to theoretically figure it out.\u00a0 The atmosphere of both Reykjavik and the old sanitorium, with its ghosts of TB patients, are certainly distinctive parts of the story as well.\u00a0 Obviously, this is a book that\u2019s been translated, but the crispness and spareness of the prose as well as the tightness of the plot seem to retain some kind of Icelandic ethos.\u00a0 Like all the best writers, Jonasson has taken the lessons he learned from Christie and made the form his own, making this one of the reads of the year.\u00a0\u00a0<em>&#8212; Robin Agnew<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Author Jonasson, an Icelandic fan of Agatha Christie from a child, had read all the available books translated by the time he was 17.\u00a0 At that point, craving more, he simply went to the publisher and asked if he himself could translate more of her previously untranslated titles.\u00a0 They agreed, and Jonasson was treated to &#8230; <a title=\"Ragnar Jonasson: Death at the Sanitorium\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/ragnar-jonasson-death-at-the-sanitorium\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about Ragnar Jonasson: Death at the Sanitorium\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[54,1817,50,100,1816,1436],"class_list":["post-5919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-agatha-christie","tag-death-at-the-sanitorium","tag-iceland","tag-minotaur-books","tag-ragnar-jonasson","tag-traditional-detection"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5919"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5919\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5940,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5919\/revisions\/5940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}