The fourth volume of the Dark Iceland series was also exciting.
A young woman returns to the place where she spent the first years of her life. During this time, her mother and sister died tragically. These deaths were never solved. Now the same fate befalls her, but investigators Tómas and Ari Pór don't believe it was suicide. Both investigators delve into a dark secret involving all the protagonists, which leads to another death.
As always, it is very excitingly written and keeps you guessing until the end how everything fits together. ( )

Whiteout. Ragnar Jonasson. 2013. Ari Thor is asked by his old boss Tomas to go with him to investigate a suspicious death of a young woman in a remote area near a lighthouse. The woman’s mother and had died there years before. The setting is certainly a major factor in this book: winter in Iceland. It is almost Christmas and bitterly cold. Much is made of the Icelandic custom of giving books as Christmas gifts. An interesting book and one of a series. ( )

Asta Karadottir has returned to the scene of a terrible event that she witnessed. She hasn't been there for 25 years. So why has she returned? She says that she is writing a thesis about her father who had survived the deaths of her mother and her sister twenty five years earlier.

Asta has written to the owner of the house, a well known media personality, asking if she may stay for a few days, and she is given her old childhood room. The people in the house are those who were there 25 years earlier. Within two days Asta herself is dead, suffering the same fate as her mother and sister.

Did Asta return to commit suicide, or is the same killer still at large? There is a limited cast of suspects, and fairly quickly another person dies.

Detectives have already arrived to investigate Asta's death and each of the suspects is scrutinised carefully. DNA evidence provides clues but is the finger pointing at the right person?

One of the detectives, Ari Thor, brings his very pregnant girlfriend to the locality with him, as it seems unlikely he will make it home for Christmas.

Icelandic crime fiction has a different flavour, and is truly noir. ( )

The 4th novel in the series (which was translated and published 5th in English) fills in the gap left in the English translations (and continues from the first 3 if you are reading them in the proper order).

Kristín and Ari Thór Arason are together again and are awaiting a child (knowing what happens in the 5th book makes you see where the story is leading...). Christmas is coming in the cold fjords of the north and everyone is looking forward at it. Except for one young woman in the village of Kálfshamarvík who appears to have jumped from the cliffs which crowd the villages.

Ari Thór goes to investigate (with Kristín traveling with him) after his old boss, Tomas, asks him to assist. What follows is essentially a locked room mystery - there is a very limited number of characters (it is a small village and with the snow coming down, most of them never leave their house).

It looks like a suicide and everyone wants it to be - so they can have Christmas if nothing else. Except that things do not add up and it is not the first woman from that family to die in the same way. So Ari Thór investigates - and almost gets in trouble (as usual).

The story works because we see it through Ari Thór's eyes - no omniscient narrator to clarify some connections - we learn about them when the detectives do. Past secrets end up being important for the solution of the case. And as much as one likes our detective, he is not always the fastest mind out there - which makes the series even better in some ways.

A solid entry in a solid series. It was supposed to be a 5 books series but in 2020 Jónasson returned to Ari Thór's story with a 6th book so there is one more left for me to read. ( )

A few days before Christmas, policeman Ari Thor and his former boss, Tomas, are asked to investigate the death of a young woman visiting the home in which she was raised in Kálfshamrvik, Iceland. Asta's dead body was discovered beneath the steep cliffs and the two must determine if it was an accident, suicide, or murder. Ari is bothered to learns that Asta’s mother and younger sister both lost their lives in a similar fashion while her father died in a mental institution. Besides the two policemen and the evidence team, there are only four characters: the wealthy owner of the home, the brother and sister who are the caretakers, and the neighbor, who takes care of the horses. The writing is crisp, the weather cold, the landscape stark but beautifully described, the atmosphere dark and threatening, and the secrets many. My only complaint was that the murderer was too obvious. ( )