- First published in Icelandic in 2017
- Translated from Icelandic by Victoria Cribb
- Published in English by Penguin Random House: 30 April 2020
- ISBN: 978-0-718-18908-2
- Pages: 302
Synopsis (Penguin Random House)
The final nail-biting instalment in the critically acclaimed Hidden Iceland series
1987. An isolated farm house in the east of Iceland. The snowstorm should have shut everybody out. But it didn't. The couple should never have let him in. But they did. An unexpected guest, a liar, a killer. Not all will survive the night. And Detective Hulda Hermannsdóttir will be haunted forever.
My Take
The Prologue tells us that Reykjavík detective is coming back to work after 2 months leave following a family tragedy. She is not sure she is ready to return to work but she knows it will be better than what is happening every day at the moment. A suspected murder has been called in from a farm in the east of Iceland. The bodies have been lying there since at least Christmas, over 2 months.
The time frame then jumps back 2 months, before Christmas, two settings: the farm in the east, and Hulda's own home in Reykjavík where she and her husband and teenage daughter are preparing for Christmas. In addition Hulda is investigating another case: a teenage girl who has gone missing while taking a gap year to travel on her own around Iceland.
Predictably these plot strands come together but what is not predictable is the how and why of their concatenating. Very cleverly plotted, and an excellent read.
My rating: 4.4
About the author
Ragnar Jonasson is an international number one bestselling author who has sold over one and a half million books worldwide. He was born in Reykjavík, Iceland, where he also works as an investment banker and teaches copyright law at Reykjavík University. He has previously worked on radio and television, including as a TV news reporter for the Icelandic National Broadcasting Service, and, from the age of seventeen, has translated fourteen of Agatha Christie's novels. His critically acclaimed international bestseller The Darkness is soon to be a major TV series.
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