Description
November 29, 1970. A woman’s body is found burning in a remote Norwegian valley. Her fingerprints have been sanded away. Every label has been cut from her clothes. She carries nine fake passports and not a single real name.
More than fifty years later, she is still unidentified.
When podcast journalist Ingrid Solberg investigates the case for her show Forgotten Voices, a ninety-year-old Frenchman walks into a Paris café and says the five words that will change everything:
“I know who she was.”
What Antoine Dubois reveals is a story that stretches from wartime Alsace to 1950s Parisian revolutionary circles, from the courtrooms of colonial Algeria to the hijacked airfields of the Palestinian resistance. It is the story of a woman named Amira — a Jewish refugee who lost everything, found purpose in the fight against empire, and was consumed by the very forces she helped unleash.
Inspired by one of Europe’s most famous unsolved cold cases and the BBC podcast Death in Ice Valley, The Isdal Woman is a sweeping historical thriller about identity, betrayal, and the secrets powerful men will kill to protect.
For fans of Daniel Silva, Mick Herron, and Kate Quinn.
Broadway fan –
This is a very in depth piece of historical fiction that flows quickly with intrigue and action. It was a little know. Story to me but I quickly learned about what may have been. Fiction and historical fiction intertwined beautifully to create in depth characters with flaws that feel natural. Don’t let 600 pages deter you, it is a quick read, well worth it!
Amazon Customer –
This book fills in the gaps of a real life mystery. It creates a main character who is passionate, flawed and broken but, one you find yourself rooting for. The historic content accurately describes events that readers can still see playing out in our world today.. The story flows smoothly and quickly.
J. Gypton –
The author takes a largely unknown unsolved mystery from the early 1970s and creates a detailed, decades-spanning plausible story that connects WW2, the Cold War, and revolutionary terrorism of the 60s and 70s – and it all works. I found his writing physically and emotionally evocative, helping me paint clear pictures in my head of the people and their surroundings, and of their moods and attitudes. He cleverly blended real characters from the Palestinian liberation/terror movements into a fictional tale, filling in the blanks to create a life for his female protagonist. It takes skill for an author to understand the real history of a time and place well enough to blend it smoothly with a fictional plot, and Hall does that here.
I gave it 4 stars entirely out of my preference as a reader: I am not a huge fan of somber stories, and this one is. The main character is interesting, and doomed (my only spoiler), and that made for a mildly sad read throughout. I read history to learn and out of interest; I read fiction typically for entertainment or escape. This book is not ‘light’ – it’s not bombastic, but it doesn’t prop up characters as heroes; rather, it tells a story that makes sense, ending in plausible answers to the mystery death of a nameless woman whose body has still not been identified.