Rupture by Ragnar Jónasson

Rupture: An Ari Thor Thriller by Ragnar Jónasson; translated from the Icelandic by Quentin Bates --- 246 pages including Author's Note, Pronunciation Guide, maps, and Acknowledgements. Book 4 in the Dark Iceland Series.

The residents of Siglufjörður are in a panic because a traveler has brought haemorrhagic fever to their small community. The man dies; but then others in the town fall ill. There are more deaths; the town is quarantined and the residents are ordered to stay isolated in their homes for the duration. Local police officer Ari Thor is one of the few people who are allowed to go out; mostly to insure the quarantine is maintained.

Other than that, he has little to do but brood, so when he is contacted by Hedinn, a man with some questions about an old and mysterious family photograph, he welcomes the distraction. 

Meanwhile Isrun, a television reporter in Reykjavik, is looking for a big story that can advance her career. When a young child is kidnapped from his pram, Isrun thinks she's found her story: the boy friend of the child's mother has drawn the attention of the police. Then, in what seems at first like an unrelated incident, a politician's son is killed by a hit and run driver.

What links these two different plot lines is the motive: retribution. In both cases, old betrayals have festered and burst into cold, deliberate acts of revenge.

Jonasson combines intricate plots and evocative language to create an intensity that catches the reader imagination and will not let go. Piece by piece he drops his clues and challenges you to put them together before the final revelation. 

A classic murder mystery with a Nordic Noir twist, and perfect for a cold winter night's  entertainment.  Jonasson is the third of the new Icelandic trilogy of Nordic Noir, along with Arnaldur Indridason and Yrsa Sigurdardóttir.

The Dark Iceland series in order: Snowblind, Nightblind, Blackout, Rupture.

Click HERE to read the review from The Crime Review.com.

Click HERE to read the review from Novel Gossip.com.

Click HERE to read the review from Crime by the Book.com.

The Legacy by Yrsa Sigurdardottir

The Legacy: A Thriller by Yrsa Sigurdardóttir; translated from the Icelandic by Victoria Cribb --- 455 pages

Yrsa Sigurdardóttir is the current queen of Icelandic crime fiction, with a number of books to her credit.  The Legacy is the first book in a projected new "Children's House" series that will explore the unlikely partnership of Freyja, a psychologist who works with severely traumatized children, and newly promoted homicide detective Huldar.

Freyja and Huldar must (reluctantly) work together on a particularly horrific series of murders because the only witness they have is a seven-year-old girl who was hiding under the bed in the room when her mother was killed.  Freyja dislikes the police in general and Huldar in particular, but has to cooperate in order to protect little Magrét from the intense pressure of the investigation.

Meanwhile, Karl, a lonely young man living in his deceased mother's house, is getting strange numerically-coded messages on short wave radio that seem to be aimed specifically at him. It takes a long time for Karl to figure out the key to the numbers and decode them, but the cryptic messages that result only frighten and confuse him further.

The only thing that is certain is that the killer, whoever he is, holds a violent grudge against his victims, yet they seem to be chosen at random. If he can only discover what connects the victims, Huldar is certain he could identify the killer. But will he make the connection before the killer strikes again?

Nordic Noir to rival the darkest and most tangled tales of the Icelandic sagas.

Click HERE to read the * review from Publisher's Weekly.

Click HERE to read the review from the Criminal Element blog.

Click HERE to read the review from theartsdesk.com.

Into Oblivion by Arnaldur Indridason

Into Oblivion: An Icelandic Thriller by Arnaldur Indridason; translated from the Icelandic by Victoria Cribb --- 345 pages

The eleventh book in Indridason's crime fiction series; this one, like 2015's Reykjavik Nights, is a prequel to the original series, showing us Inspector Erlendur Sveinsson at the start of his career as a detective, and his relationship with his partner and mentor, the enigmatic Marion Briem.

In this book Erlendur and Marion are called in to investigate when the body of a man is found in a remote lagoon formed by the runoff from a geothermal power station. Clearly the man did not drown, but was put into the water after death. Instead his fatal injuries resulted from a fall from an immense height onto a hard surface.  The dead man's clothing leads Marion and Erlendur to suspect a connection with nearby American military base. It's 1979 and the Cold War is at its height. The American presence is unpopular with many Icelanders, There is a thriving black market in American products, including drugs and alcohol, fueling an increase in crime and social problems.

In his spare time Erlendur is also looking into a cold case: a girl gone missing on her way to school 25 years before, and never heard from again. Her parents died not knowing her fate.  For personal reasons, Erlendur is obsessed with this case and others like it; to find answers for those left to endure such painful losses.

Another haunting story from the Iclandic master of Nordic Noir.

Strange Shores by Arnaldur Indridason

Strange Shores: An Inspector Erlendur Novel by Arnaldur Indridason --- 296 pages

Arnaldur Indridason is perhaps the best known of Icelandic mystery author of "Nordic Noir" thrillers, with nine of his twelve Inspector Erlendur books translated into English.

Erlendur is a misfit, a dour man whose entire life has been weighed down by guilt over the childhood death of his younger brother, who was lost on the high moors above their remote east Icelandic village during a sudden snowstorm. The two young boys had accompanied their father on a search for some of the family's sheep. All three had become separated from each other during the blizzard. Their father made it back home and raised the alarm; search parties found and rescued Erlendur; but young Beggi vanished, his body never found.

The tragedy destroyed the family. They abandoned the farm and moved to Reykjavik., where his father succumbed to depression. Eventually Erlendur found work as a police officer.

There's an underlying fatalism to all of Erlendur's cases;  many of the crimes he investigates have their roots in the past, when Iceland was a poor, insular country, life was hard and unforgiving, and domestic violence was often covered up. Yet Erlendur understands that kind of crime far better than the crimes of the "new" Iceland, connived at by shady developers and greedy financiers, drug dealers and sex traffickers.  

In Indridason's last novel, Black Skies, Erlendur was referred to but never appeared; he was said to be on leave and visiting his old family croft at Bakkasel. In Strange Shores we read the story of Erlendur's visit there, once again wandering the moors searching for expiation from his guilt.

There he meets an old hunter and hears again the stories of other lives lost during past storms; one, in particular, catches his interest, because it happened very close in time to the loss of his brother.  A young married woman left her home one morning to walk over the mountain pass to visit her mother in the next village; a sudden storm came down on the mountains and she too was never found.

A few years later, the tragedy was completed when her husband, who never remarried, was drowned in a storm while working on a fishing boat. But his body at least was recovered and laid to rest in his village graveyard.

The story catches Erlendur's attention. Even though it all happened more than forty years ago, in his usual obsessive way, Erlendur begins making inquiries, piecing together accounts of what occurred, tracing family members and anyone yet alive who knew the people involved and might still remember details of these events. And he begins to discover discrepancies, as he compares the various accounts, that lead him to suspect something quite different happened. That someone still alive is harboring a guilty secret that has wreaked his life, as Erlendur's guilt has worked on him.

A powerful tale of love and death, revenge and retribution, confession and absolution, very like the ancient Icelandic sagas.

Click HERE to read an interview with Arnaldur Indridason talking about Strange Shores.

Outrage by Arnaldur Indridason

Outrage: An Inspector Erlendur Novel by Arnaldur Indridason; translated from the Icelandic by Anna Yates --- 281 pages

This is the eighth and latest mystery in the series about an Icelandic homicide detective. However in this book Inspector Erlendur is offstage. He's taken a leave of absence to travel to the East Fjords, leaving his assistant, Elinborg, in charge. Elinborg suspects he is dealing with some old personal business; she hasn't inquired too closely because she knows Erlendur to be close-mouthed in the old Icelandic fashion about such things, and she respects that.

In his absence, Elinborg is handed a difficult and disturbing case, involving the murder of a man whom she quickly comes to suspect was a serial rapist who stalked single women, drugged them so they could neither resist nor remember their attacker, and then brutally raped them. With patience and persistence, Elinborg manages to develop evidence that confirms the murdered man's nasty proclivities; but tragically, it appears that he was killed by one of his victims. All that remains is to gain a confession from the suspect, and Elinborg will get all the credit for solving the case.

But in the course of her investigation, Elinborg visited the rapist's childhood home in an isolated rural village, and discovered an old unsolved case of a young girl who went missing from that village. She's convinced there's a connection. The villagers are sullen and uncooperative; they try to discourage Elinborg but that just makes her even more persistent. In the end she uncovers the truth and learns there are some wrongs that can never be righted. Indridason, like Stieg Larsson, Karin Fossum and others, writes in the popular thriller genre called Nordic Noir.