Ever since Lawrence Block’s Bernie the Burglar series was filmed as the dreadful Burglar, I’ve been leary of mysteries being made into movies.

Fortunately, the filmed versions of Dennis Lehane’s Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone and, hopefully, the upcoming Shutter Island have changed those misgivings.

So in that vein, I am excited that the filmed version of Icelandic  author  Arnaldur Indridason’s Jar City is now being shown on the Sundance Channel.

Jar City, filmed in 2006, will air at 11 p.m. Wednesday Aug 19 and then again on Saturday Aug. 23. Check out the Sundance Channel’s schedule.

When it was released, Jar City received quite good reviews. The New York Times called it “vivid and powerful.”

A comment on imdb.com, stated that Jar City could be “an episode of “CSI: Reykjavik” .”

Jar City also was quite popular in Iceland. In one year more than  83.000 people saw the movie. The total population of Iceland is 300.000. That bit of info came from our next-door neighbors who are Icelandic. (A shout out to Thor and Erla.)

Arnaldur Indridason also is popular.

In 2003, he had five novels on the Icelandic best-sellers list for a week, the only author other than J.K. Rowling to simultaneously hold the top three spots. In 2004, he sold 100,000 copies of his mysteries. That’s the year that his novels were seven of the 10 most popular titles borrowed from the Reykjavík City Library. Then there are his awards – two Glass Keys, a Swedish Caliber and the Golden Dagger.

A few years ago, I interviewed Arnaldur Indridason for Mystery Scene. (Issue No. 97, Holiday, 2006)

During our interview, we discussed Iceland as a setting for crime fiction, how he uses the history of the country in his novels and the changes the country has undergone.

Arnaldur’s novels are written in Icelandic. He has a good relationship with his English translator who also lives in Reykjavik. “He represents the books the way I write them,” he told me during the interview.

We also talked about the literacy rate in Iceland. Nordic and Scandinavian countries are known as being nations of avid readers, and Iceland is no exception, having also produced a number of authors.

Iceland also has one of the highest literacy rates in the world at 99.9 percent.

“Icelanders read a lot, and all kinds of books,” said Arnaldur during the interview.  “They love good writing, poetry, anything. They are open to new things and are willing to find new authors. We are proud of our writers because literature is our contribution to the world. We’ve been writing books since the 10^th century with the Icelandic sagas. And those books are still hugely popular. Books matter very much in Iceland.”

I am most interested in how Jar City, which I liked very much and which made my best of the year, translates to the screen.

Then I’ll compare notes with my neighbors.

(For a bit more about Jar City, visit my Off the page blog.)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 18th, 2009 at 7:01 pm and is filed under Arnaldur Indridason, TV Mysteries. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.