Published in e-book and hardback 10th December 2020 and paperback 21st January 2021 by Orenda Books.
Translated by David Warriner.
From the cover of the book:
Easter weekend is approaching, and snow is gently falling in Siglufjörður, the northernmost town in Iceland, as crowds of tourists arrive to visit the majestic ski slopes.Ari Thór Arason is now a police inspector, but he’s separated from his girlfriend, who lives in Sweden with their three-year-old son. A family reunion is planned for the holiday, but a violent blizzard is threatening and there is an unsettling chill in the air.
Three days before Easter, a nineteen-year-old local girl falls to her death from the balcony of a house on the main street. A perplexing entry in her diary suggests that this may not be an accident, and when an old man in a local nursing home writes ‘She was murdered’ again and again on the wall of his room, there is every suggestion that something more sinister lies at the heart of her death...
As the extreme weather closes in, cutting the power and access to Siglufjörður, Ari Thór must piece together the puzzle to reveal a horrible truth... one that will leave no one unscathed.
Chilling, claustrophobic and disturbing, Winterkill marks the startling conclusion to the million-copy bestselling Dark Iceland series and cements Ragnar Jónasson as one of the most exciting authors in crime fiction.
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Winter is the season for snowy thrillers, and lovely bit of Nordic noir from the pen of Ragnar Jonasson always fits the bill nicely. Winterkill is the last book in the fabulously successful Dark Iceland series and, dear reader, it does not disappoint.
Welcome back to the quiet little town of Siglufjörður, in northern Iceland, where Ari Thór Arason has risen to the dizzy heights of police inspector, in charge of maintaining law and order with the help of a less than impressive staff of one inexperienced junior officer.
Ari Thór is looking forward to a quiet Easter weekend, and some quality time with his ex-partner and three year old son, who are visiting from Sweden for the holiday. He is not expecting much excitement on the horizon, except in the form of the snow storm that is forecast to hit sometime in the next few days, but his peace is shattered when the body of a young woman is found on the main street, the victim of a fall from a building, and he is called upon to investigate the circumstances behind the apparent tragic accident.
As Ari Thór begins to look closer at the life of the young victim, he has a nagging suspicion that something is not quite right here and not everyone is telling the truth about what they know. Why was this young woman in a strange house in the middle of the night? Did she fall or was she pushed? And why has an old man in a local nursing home scrawled a message about murder on the wall of his room? So much for Ari Thór's quiet weekend...
The suspense builds as the investigation proceeds and the impending blizzard approaches, reaching an explosive climax when the disturbing truth is finally uncovered, at the same time as the storm breaks and creates havoc in the little town. It's so beautifully done, especially since this is a translation - well done David Warriner.
Ragnar Jonasson always has the ability to create the most delicious of claustrophobic atmospheres in his books and Winterkill is no exception. Right from the first page, you can feel the chill from the desolate landscape seeping into your bones and this colours your view of the residents of Siglufjörður. Bizarrely, at no point does this come across as a bustling little town despite the fact that this is a small community on the way up, and one which is full of tourists for the holiday weekend. Everything is so tense and vivid between the main players, with the focus is so completely on them and their movements, that even though you know the town is full of people they almost seem to be walking around against a backdrop of ghostly figures that blend into the frozen background and take no part in the story. It's creepy.
This makes a really interesting end to the Dark Iceland series, encompassing so much about the fierce beauty of the Icelandic landscape and the history of its people, alongside a cracking crime story. Don't worry if you have not read the previous books, because this works well as a standalone - in fact, I only know bits and pieces about the books before this one and I still found it unputdownable (I will however, be taking the time to absorb them in detail in the very near future). You really can't go wrong with a Ragnar Jonasson book!
Winterkill is available to buy in e-book and hardback formats from your favourite book retailer now, and paperback from 21st January 2021, or from Bookshop.org HERE.
Thank you to Orenda Books for sending me an e-copy of this book in return for and honest review and to Anne Cater of Random Things Tours for inviting me to be part of this blog tour.
About the author:
Before embarking on a writing career, Ragnar translated fourteen Agatha Christie novels into Icelandic, and has had several short stories published in German, English and Icelandic literary magazines. Ragnar set up the first overseas chapter of the CWA (Crime Writers’ Association) in Reykjavík, and is co-founder of the International crime-writing festival Iceland Noir.
Ragnar’s debut thriller, Snowblind became an almost instant bestseller when it was published in June 2015 with Nightblind (winner of the Dead Good Reads Most Captivating Crime in Translation Award) and then Blackout, Rupture and Whiteout following soon after. To date, Ragnar Jónasson has written five novels in the Dark Iceland series, which has been optioned for TV by On the Corner.
He lives in Reykjavík with his wife and two daughters.
Thanks so much for the blog tour support x
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