Published By: Michael Joseph
Pages: 304
Released On: 12/11/2026
Translated By: Philip Roughton
As snow blankets Reykjavík and Christmas approaches, young detective Helgi is looking forward to a quiet holiday – until those plans are torn away in a flash. One month after his girlfriend Aníta is killed in a car accident, he returns to work in Reykjavík, haunted by loss and rage. The driver – Helgi’s ex-girlfriend Bergþóra, a violent alcoholic whose abuse he kept secret – insists Aníta’s death was an accident and walks free.
To escape his mounting despair, Helgi throws himself into the unsolved disappearance of his predecessor, Hulda, a retired officer long presumed dead. But as he follows the traces she left behind, the lines between her past and his present begin to blur . . .
When Bergþóra is later found lifeless in her bath, suspicion falls squarely on Helgi. With his own colleagues turning against him, can he uncover the truth in time to clear his name, make it home for Christmas, and finally turn the page to begin again?
*****
Thanks to NetGalley and Michael Joseph for the advanced copy of this title in return for an honest review.
You can always rely on a Ragnar Jonasson thriller!
I know it’s translated, and some translated novels can lose their nuances, but this felt right, even in English. It felt effortless to read and fully engaging.
It covers two timelines, and I’m a big fan of multiple timelines and POVs – as long as they’re done well – and he has handled both very well.
I found it a bit chaotic at times but I mean that in a positive way. It adds to the confusion over the whodunnit and it really gives another level of mystery.
I completely glossed over the fact that this is in the same Helgi series as his other books Death at the Sanatorium and The Mysterious Case of the Missing Crime Writer, but I don’t think you need to read those to enjoy this one. Yes you will probably get more out of it if you do, but it’s completely readable as a standalone.
I found some of the dialogue to be a bit stilted but I’m not a huge dialogue fan so that could just be me. There’s not much character depth but that could be because it’s the third book and we should know the characters already from the previous books.
It’s not quite a cosy crime but it doesn’t hit the extremes of a thriller. It’s more sedate, calm, more about the goings-on around the crime rather than the crime itself.
At first I thought it would need to be longer to get everything you need for a thriller, but now I’ve finished it I think it’s quite right. If it was much longer it would have lots its impact.
I loved the twist and the cliff-hanger has made me excited for the next instalment.
