“Jar City” – a Crime Novel about Privacy Issues
I have resumed my old habit of curling up on a comfy couch and reading, novels! 
Oh, if ever my supervisor were to find out…
But I have changed my reading habits ever so slightly; I have taken to reading Modern Novels. And Swedish Detective Novels at that 
Glasbruket, or Myrin or Jar City : A Thriller
I have just finished reading the Icelandic Crime Novel Glasbruket, or Myrin or Jar City : A Thriller, from 2002 (it’s classified as ‘Swedish’ since I had to resort to reading it in Swedish. Icelandic is sort of a Closed Book to me… 
). It is written by Arnaldur Indridason who is a journalist according to the blurb on the back of the book. And it won ‘Glasnyckeln‘, or ‘The Glass Key’, in 2002. It is a prize given to the best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year. He also won the prize the consecutive year for the novel Kvinna i grönt, or ‘Woman in Green’ [couldn't easily locate an English title for that one so I made one up ] or Grafarthögn, he’s the first author to have managed this feat.
The Story is set in Reykjavik and the Hero of the Story is Erlendur Sveinsson. A middle-aged divorcé policeman with two children; a junkie daughter and an alcoholic son, and a persistent chest pain. You get the picture…
About half way through the book gets really interesting though when it turns out that the whole Murder Mystery leads to Iceland’s gigantic DNA Database in which you can apparently find all the genetic information about Icelanders past & present. Because at this point the ordinary Murder Hunt all of a sudden turns into a question of Privacy Issues…
Det är en problematisk situation. Folk litar på att den information som går in i databasen inte kommer ut eller används i tvivelaktiga sammanhang, eller att den rätt och slätt kan stjälas. Som du kanske är medveten om är det här en mycket känslig fråga för allmänheten och vi vill försöka undvika masshysteri. Glasbruket p.244
Basically this quote is from when Sveinsson visits the CEO of the Genetic Database and she explains how important it is that people can trust that the information cannot be accessed by anyone unauthorised. Therefore any hint of this possibility must be kept very hush-hush.
Because it turns out that the information stored is very easy to access, especially if you belong to the staff running the database (Social Engineering still works as smoothly as ever). And that the information obtained can be used to inspire Murder…
So even though I found the book quite slow at the start once the clues pointed to an Information Issue my LIS-instincts went to Red Alert and I couldn’t put the book down. And as we all know Privacy is a big issue in Sweden right now so it felt like a current & inspiring read.
But now I think I shall return to my more familiar turn of the century milieus.
Posted: Sunday, January 22nd, 2006 @ 17:10
Categories: Books, Culture, Information, Pretty Pictures.
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