Ragnar Jónasson is the acclaimed Icelandic author of crime fiction. The Dark Iceland series is set in and around Siglufjörður, featuring Detective Ari Thor.

Iceland is the most literary nation on earth. According to the BBC, one in ten Icelanders will publish a book. Crime fiction is particularly popular.

Ragnar Jónasson started as the guy who translated 14 Agatha Christie novels into Icelandic. 😀

His debut novel, Snowblind (2010) introduces Ari, a rookie cop from Reykjavik, arriving in an idyllically quiet fishing village in Northern Iceland, where no one locks their doors – accessible only via a small mountain tunnel.

Ragnar spent many summers as a kid in Siglufjörður. He writes what he knows. 

Surprisingly, the author did not do his own translation to English. His translator is British though Ragnar did edit the English editions, as well.

When a young woman is found lying half-naked in the snow, bleeding and unconscious, and a highly esteemed, elderly writer falls to his death in the local theatre, Ari is dragged straight into the heart of a community where he can trust no one, and secrets and lies are a way of life.

An avalanche and unremitting snowstorms close the mountain pass, and the 24-hour darkness threatens to push Ari over the edge …

An intriguing plot for sure.

BUT I felt the translation I read was not particularly well written. Too simplistic. Key points repeated too often.

Jumping forward and backward in time didn’t work for me. It was confusing, not engaging.

Still good — but not as good as earlier Christie, in my opinion.

The Big Four is a secret international crime cartel with 4 leaders who want to dominate the world.

Claude Darrell, known as the Destroyer, is worst of the worst. He dies when their hidden lair of the Four explodes — or did he?

Perhaps the book seemed less precise because it evolved out of 12 short stories.

Others speculate that this novel was assembled at a low point in Christie’s life. She was arguing with her husband. They were soon to be divorced.

In fact, at one point in 1926 she disappeared for weeks. More than a thousand police officers, 15,000 volunteers, and several aeroplanes searched the rural landscape near where her car was found.

Eventually she was discovered in a hotel under an assumed name.

The Murder on the Links by Agatha Christie, first published in the US in 1923.

I’m astonished how skillfully this story was done. A female writer who just might be better than Conan Doyle.

It’s the second book in the series.

Hercule Poirot is even more genius. Sidekick Arthur Hastings even more easily duped.

The story takes place in northern France, giving Poirot a hostile competitor from the Paris Sûreté.

Renauld had been stabbed in the back with a knife and left in a newly dug grave adjacent to a local golf course.

The mystery is compounded when a murdered tramp is found, stabbed through the heart with the same(?) murder weapon.

New York Times Book Review:

 “The plot has peculiar complications and the reader will have to be very astute indeed if he guesses who the criminal is until the last complexity has been unravelled.

The author is notably ingenious in the construction and unravelling of the mystery, which develops fresh interests and new entanglements at every turn.

She deserves commendation also for the care with which the story is worked out and the good craftsmanship with which it is written. …”

The 4th and final instalment of the John Puller series.

Quite good. My opinion of Baldacci was upped considerably after reading this series.

Paul Rogers has been in prison for ten years. Finally paroled, he sets out for revenge.

After his father is accused of murder, combat veteran and Special Agent John Puller must investigate his past and learn the truth. It leads right to Rogers.

John Puller is Baldacci’s version of Jack Reacher.

Isaac’s Storm (2000) is not Larson’s best book.

BUT it’s still worth reading if only to learn the history of weather forecasting. If you think it’s bad now, imagine how little they knew in the 1800s.

The people of Galveston had no warning. Few people evacuated to the mainland.

When it happened, the weather service mostly went into ass covering mode.

The 1900 Galveston hurricane was the deadliest natural disaster in United States history and the fifth-deadliest Atlantic hurricane, only behind Hurricane Mitch overall. The hurricane left between 6,000 and 12,000 fatalities in the United States …

In 1915, a storm similar in strength and track to the 1900 hurricane struck Galveston … but only 53 died mainly due to a 10 mile long seawall that had been built after the first disaster.

The book tells the story from the point of view of Isaac Monroe Cline (October 13, 1861 – August 3, 1955), chief meteorologist at the Galveston, Texas office of the U.S. Weather Bureau, now known as the National Weather Service, from 1889 to 1901.

But I never got interested in his personal life, nor the rivalry with his brother, Joseph.

Smart. Well written. A psychological thriller where everyone has secrets.

And it’s a modern book with a plot shaped by pandemic. The police using social media to track suspects.

Ciara and Oliver meet in a supermarket queue in Dublin and start dating the same week COVID-19 reaches Irish shores.

56 days later detectives arrive at Oliver’s apartment to discover a decomposing body inside.

… What happened?

3rd in the enjoyable John Puller series.

Baldacci’s best series for me, so far.

John Puller’s older brother, Robert, was convicted of treason.

His inexplicable escape from prison makes him the most wanted criminal in the country. Some in the government believe that John Puller represents their best chance at capturing Robert alive, and so Puller must bring in his brother to face justice.

But Puller quickly discovers that his brother is pursued by others who don’t want him to survive. Puller is in turn pushed into an uneasy, fraught partnership with another agent, who may have an agenda of her own. …

davidbaldacci.com

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Wow.

This is intense.

Audra just wants to reach California. She’s finally found the strength to flee her abusive husband and make a fresh start for her two children.

With little Sean and Louise in tow, she has carefully made her way across the country, taking back roads and avoiding attention. 
​
So when an unsettling local sheriff pulls her over in the middle of the Arizona desert, Audra works to hide her nerves and keep calm. She has to. But then he pulls a bag of drugs she’s never seen before out of her trunk, and nervousness turns into panic. She thinks the worst has happened. …

haylenbeck.com

It gets worse. Much worse.