Icelandic Crime Fiction

Tense and dark, each of these three crime books is the first in their series. There are two police procedurals by Icelandic author Yrsa Sigurdardottir and Finnish author Satu Rämö, and a missing person search that eventually stretches over five books by Lilja Sigurdardottir.

The titles in Gumshoe Book "where do I start" bundles are deliberately chosen to help you find new binge-worthy authors and series. 

Dóra struggles to cope with life after taking a bullet to the head. Rado is the child of refugees, his career shunted off the tracks due to his family connections to an rganised crime gang. But they’re the only ones available when a troubled teenager vanishes from a school trip, and the trail gets darker the further they pursue it.

Broken takes place in a side of Reykjavík no visitor would ever want to see, as the mismatched pair tread on all the wrong toes in the search for the missing youngster.

After a day of simmering tension on a trip to an uninhabited island, Júlia snaps and leaves her husband Gíó marooned in the middle of a freezing fjord in the depths of the Icelandic winter, with night drawing in.

When she regrets her decision and returns, he is nowhere to be found...

Detective Hildur Rúnarsdottir and her trainee Jakob are plagued by their own demons while working on the chilly west coast of Iceland: Hildur by the disappearance of her younger sisters twenty-five years ago and Jakob by a custody battle that has left him unable to see his son. When a local politician is found shot dead on a ski trail, the two must put aside their personal problems to investigate the murder. While initially thought to be a crime of passion, there are much darker secrets hiding beneath the surface.

Hildur and Jakob soon realise that even the dead can't stay buried forever.

November, 1967, Iceland. Fourteen-year-old Marsi has a secret penpal – a boy who lives on the other side of the country – but she has been writing to him in her older sister’s name.

Now she is excited to meet him for the first time. But when the date arrives, Marsi is prevented from going, and during the night her sister Stína goes missing – her bloodstained anorak later found at the place where Marsi and her penpal had agreed to meet.

November, 1977. Stína’s disappearance remains unsolved. Then an unexpected letter arrives for Marsi. It’s from her penpal, and he’s still out there… Desperate for news of her missing sister, but terrified that he might coming after her next, Marsi returns to her hometown and embarks on an investigation of her own.

But Marsi has always had trouble distinguishing her vivid dreams from reality, and as insomnia threatens her sanity, it seems she can’t even trust her own memories … and her sister’s killer is still on the loose…

An old man is found murdered in his Reykjavik flat. A cryptic note and a photograph of a young girl's grave are left behind.

Inspector Erlendur discovers that several decades ago the victim was accused, but not convicted, of an unsolved crime.

As he follows a fascinating trail of strange forensic evidence, Inspector Erlendur uncovers secrets that are much larger than the murder of one man - dark secrets that have been carefully guarded for many, many years...