A lost cat brings together two women who will become further united through bloody secrets in Dead Weight, a dark thriller about the bonds of friendship by Hildur Knútsdóttir (The Night Guest), translated from the Icelandic by Mary Robinette Kowal.
Unnur lives a well-ordered, quiet life, even if loneliness often drives her to look for her lover on his influencer wife's Instagram account. But one day she comes home from work and finds a black-and-white cat on her couch. Unnur puts the cat outside, but she comes back, so Unnur checks online for missing pets in the neighborhood and locates her owner, Ásta Ólafardóttir. Ásta retrieves the cat, named Io, but when Io comes back yet again and gives birth, they agree that the cat and her kitten should stay with Unnur for a while. Io doesn't seem to like Ásta's live-in boyfriend, anyway. Ásta drops by Unnur's several times a week to visit the cat, and Unnur finds out disturbing information about Ásta's relationship. At a moment of danger, Unnur is there to help Ásta, and she does so with shocking thoroughness.
Dead Weight promises gruesome violence right from the prologue before settling into the daily affairs of Unnur's life in a way that conveys the tension in her sense of control. Taut prose builds a palpable sense of her potential for destruction, should circumstances demand it, and gives complete credibility to her masterminding of how to face its aftermath. Perhaps, by the end of this haunting journey, more than one person has been freed. --Kristen Allen-Vogel, information services librarian at Dayton Metro Library