The Mist is the third and final book in the Hidden Iceland series. Reviews of the previous two books can be found elsewhere on my site. I’ve really enjoyed this quirky take on Icelandic police work. The Hidden Iceland series begins at the end of Hulda’s career with the police. […]
Estimated reading time: 1 minute
Book two in the Children’s House series sees Icelandic author Yrsa Sigurardottir at her chilling best. Not for the faint hearted, this is Scandi Noir at its finest. When a time capsule is dug up at a local school after ten years it contains a very creepy note written by […]
Estimated reading time: 1 minute
Icelandic culture has a great history of storytelling and there is a reverence for books and reading that seems to be lacking in other modern European countries. I think this is why there have been so many fantastic Icelandic authors coming to the fore in recent years. The Island is […]
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
Detective Inspector Hulda Hermannsdóttir of the Reykjavik Police has always found herself a bit out of step with the predominantly male dominated force that she works in. Things have been a little fraught lately and when Hulda is suddenly forced into early retirement she manages to negotiate herself an extra […]
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes
To celebrate the paperback launch of this amazing book I’m really pleased to be launching the blog tour for The Legacy today. It is always good to discover that there is a new book from Yrsa Sigurdardottir and it’s even better when you realise that it is the first in […]
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes
It is always good to discover that there is a new book from Yrsa Sigurdardottir and it’s even better when you realise that it is the first in a new series. The Children’s House works with traumatised young people advising the police on how best to question and approach them […]
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes
It is kind of ironic that since mid-June this year, earthquake activity within the caldera of the mighty ice-covered Katla volcano has increased above background levels. This book is set in Reykjavik in 1918. The days are darker than usual and the sky is full of volcanic dust. It is […]
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes
UK Publication Date: 3 Mar 2016. 288 pages. Thin Ice is the fifth book in the Icelandic detective series featuring Officer Gunnhildur although it does work quite well as a standalone story if you haven’t read any of the others. This was my first Quentin Bates book and I’ll definitely […]
Estimated reading time: 1 minute
UK Publishing Date: 27 Feb 2014. 433 pages Silence of the Sea is book number six in the Thora Guðmundsdóttir series of Icelandic crime mysteries. While it can be read as a standalone book I thoroughly recommend that you read the others in the series first as it adds so […]
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes
UK Publishing Date: 9 Jul 2015. 354 pages. Oblivion is the second English translated book in the young Erlendur series by Arnaldur Indridason. Set about five years after Reykjavik Nights our detective is now divorced and estranged from his young family. His desire to investigate missing people is growing as […]
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
UK Publishing Date: 9 Jul 2015. 304 pages. There has been a fashion recently for revisiting the lives of our favourite detectives at an early point in their career. Successful television adaptations of Endeavour (early Inspector Morse) and Young Montalbano have proved that there is an appetite for this type […]
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes
It’s bizarre to think that I read about 160 books in a year but when I was asked yesterday what my favourite book of the year was I struggled to come up with one. It was all I could do to think about the books that I had given the highest […]
Estimated reading time: 9 minutes
UK Publication Date: 22 Oct 2015. 270 pages. In recent years the Northern Europeans seem to have become the masters of the murder suspense genre. Authors like Jo Nesbo and Stieg Larsson have become synonymous with the dark and brooding crime fiction of Scandi Noir but you can’t rule out […]
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes