Rupture

October 29, 2018
When a foreign visitor to Siglufjördur, Iceland, dies of a highly infectious disease that he must have picked up on a trip to Africa, the town is quarantined, in Jónasson’s gripping fourth crime novel featuring policeman Ari Thór Arason (after 2018’s Blackout). With little work to do as a result, Ari Thór takes the opportunity to follow up on a 50-year-old cold case. In 1957, a woman named Jórunn, who lived in a remote region, died after drinking rat poison in her coffee. Jórunn’s nephew, Hédinn, who was only a year old at the time, doubts the official verdict that the poisoning was accidental. Hédinn has recently come across an old family photo showing him being held by a stranger, who he hopes might have more information about the tragedy. Ari Thór soon has his hands full, as he also begins looking into a child abduction and a murder case with political implications. Jónasson manages to resolve the plot lines plausibly, and is as strong as ever at combining fair-play with psychological depth. Agent: David Headley, DHH Literary (U.K.).

November 1, 2018
Jónasson returns from his recent Icelandic stand-alone (The Darkness, 2018) to an equally bleak puzzle for Ari Thór Arason, of the Siglufjördur police.Just in case the northern Icelandic town isn't isolated enough by geography and climate, Siglufjördur has been under quarantine ever since a wealthy traveler arrived with a particularly virulent strain of haemorrhagic fever. It seems only appropriate that at a time when Ari Thór's department (Nightblind, 2017, etc.) is in virtual lockdown, a man named Hédinn pressed him to reopen the ice-cold case of Jórunn, Hédinn's aunt, who got a fatal dose of rat poison more than 50 years ago in nearby Hédinsfjödur. Nearby, but even more isolated, the place, devoid of electrical and telephone wires, has been uninhabited ever since Hédinn's father, Gudmundur, retired from the fishing industry to settle his wife, Gudfinna, her sister, Jórunn, and Jórunn's husband, Maríus Knutsson, in the godforsaken spot. Ari Thór's attention immediately focuses on a family photograph from 1957 that includes a young man Hédinn can't identify. But his exploration of the past is sidelined by the hit-and-run death of Snorri Ellertsson, an aspiring musician whose scandalous abuse of alcohol and drugs ended the career of his father, prominent politician Ellert Snorrason, and the kidnapping of Kjartan, a little boy taken from his pram while it was parked outside a cafe in which his mother, Sunna, was having coffee with her sister, trusting in Iceland's low incidence of crime outside the pages of genre fiction. Along the way, Ari Thór's inquiries will repeatedly crisscross those of Ísrún, an ambitious TV reporter whose initial assignment to report on the quarantine blossoms into a series of revelations much darker and deadlier.Readers disappointed in the present-day subplots, which are wound up with remarkable dispatch, will be rewarded by the even more disturbing revelations from half a century ago.

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November 1, 2018
Siglufj�rdur, Iceland, police officer Ari Th�r Arason and ambitious Reykjavik reporter �sr�n return (following Blackout, 2018) to investigate a mystery woven into local lore and a scandal linking Iceland's prime minister to murder. Siglufj�rdur, in Iceland's far north, is quarantined after a tourist succumbs to a deadly, highly contagious virus. With the town's residents reluctant to venture out, Ari Th�r has few peacekeeping demands. So, when a beloved local, H�dinn, asks Ari Th�r to help identify a mysterious teenager in an old family photograph, he welcomes the diversion. Soon, Ari Th�r is immersed in a mystery; around the time the photo was taken, H�dinn's aunt, J�runn, died after accidentally ingesting rat poison. Ari Th�r's investigation into the locals' stories about H�dinn's isolated family farm reveals unanswered questions, including whether the teen could have had a role in J�runn's death. Against the backdrop of the quarantine and the contrasting bustle of �sr�n's Reykjavik investigation, Ari Th�r's dive into haunting oral history cloaks Siglufj�rdur in eeriness; evocative Nordic crime fiction.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)