Iceland is a small country with very low crime rates. Still, it has an abundance of top quality crime fiction writers. The first to be internationally acknowledged was the nestor Arnaldur Indriðason with his books starring detective Erlendur Sveinsson.
His younger colleague Ragnar Jónasson has written two outstanding series: The Dark Iceland series featuring a young policeman on his first posting and The Hidden Iceland series with an original timeline and an admirable female protagonist.
So far Yrsa Sigurðardóttir is the indisputable queen of Icelandic crime fiction with her Thóra Gudmundsdóttir series and the ongoing Children´s House series. But she has to watch out for the up-and-coming Lilja Sigurðardóttir and the recently debuted Eva Björg Ægisdóttir.
The Reykjavik Noir trilogy by Lilja Sigurðardóttir is an innovative and highly original narrative – and best read as a complete package. In the first part, Snare, we meet the young mother Sonja Gunnarsdóttir, who tries to take care of herself and her son after a messy divorce.
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A young woman is found brutally murdered in her own home, with the only witness her little daughter, who was hiding under the bed during the attack. But the girl doesn´t speak. This dark and saddening tale takes place in 2015, but it has its beginning in 1987, when child experts made the crucial decision to separate three children into different adoption homes.
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During a hot summer four friends visit the isolated island of Elliðaey, but only three of them return. Detective Inspector Hulda Hermannsdóttir at the Reykjavik police is sent to the island to investigate and soon finds haunting similarities with a previous case – a young woman found murdered ten years ago in the equally desolate West Fjords. Two young women, once best friends, both found dead in isolated locations. Is there a patient killer lurking in the barren outskirts of Iceland?
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