From time to time I run across a mystery related to the Vikings or the sagas. Usually I am disappointed. The research tends to be cursory, and I find many historical nits to pick.

Michael Ridpath’s The Wanderer was different. I have a few criticisms, but they don’t fall on the research side.

The book is part of a series about an Icelandic-American detective named Magnus (one of the things you need to get used to – accurately – is the general use of first names where we’d use last names. This is due to Icelandic patronymic naming conventions. Our hero’s full name is Magnus Jonson, but the Jonson part is rarely used. Magnus was born in Iceland but raised in the US, where he was a policeman in Boston for some years. But now he’s home in Iceland and is a police detective there. He doesn’t really feel at home in either place.

There’s a young female historian named Eyglo, who made an international name for herself with a documentary about Viking women. Now she’s working with a British crew on a documentary about Gudrid the Far-Traveled, Erik the Red’s daughter-in-law who made it both to America and to Rome during her lifetime. They’re particularly excited about a couple new discoveries they’ll be highlighting. One is a letter from Columbus himself, recently discovered in the Vatican library, that details a trip to Iceland where he acquired sailing directions for a land to the west. The other is a string of wampum – shells used by Native Americans for money – found in an archaeological dig at Gudrid’s farm in Iceland. The shells have been sourced to Nantucket, which indicates that Nantucket must have been the site of a Viking settlement.

Then a young Italian woman, also an archaeologist, is murdered near Gudrid’s farm. Murder is rare in Iceland, and Magnus is assigned to this important case. He will learn that archaeologists don’t just dig things up – sometimes they bury them.

First of all, The Wanderer was well-written. The dialogue was good; the story moved right along. My main quibble was a flavor of political correctness, which is not surprising in our time. It wasn’t preachy, just present in the background. Some of the characters’ actions, it seemed to me, were only plausible on the basis of pop gender dogma.

I wouldn’t call this book Scandinavian Noir. It lacked that suicidal, Kierkegaardian tang. Which is all to the good, in my opinion.

All in all, I found The Wanderer surprisingly good, and I recommend it.