Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

If Only I Could Be Happy

The Darkness (The Hulda Series Book 1) by Ragnar Jónasson

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Only days from retirement, Detective Inspector Hulda Hermannsdóttir is given the opportunity to choose one cold case to solve before she leaves. She immediately picks the case of a young Russian asylum seeker who was washed up dead on a lonely shore the year before. This is a book that seems to take great pleasure in wallowing in all the misery and desolation that the author can conjure. I’d be hard-pressed to think of a detective in a Nordic Noir that has a more depressing […]

Northern Exposure

Snowblind by Ragnar Jónasson

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  The first few chapters of this book made me groan because they read like an airport paperback thriller. Nothing against that genre, it’s just not for me. I thought about quitting the book. But I stuck with it and I’m glad I did. It ended up being sort of a Agatha Christie tribute: a series of murders and unexplained events happening in a sleepy town where everybody knows everyone, only the town is perpetually covered in snow because it’s in the northernmost point of […]

The End (CBR10 BINGO)

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CBR 10 BINGO Square: This Is The End (Last in the Dark Iceland series) Best for: Completionists. Although if you’re not familiar with any of the characters in the series but like mysteries, you’ll probably enjoy this. In a nutshell: A police officer (not our protagonist) is shot at an abandoned house. Had he stumbled upon a drug deal? Was the mayor involved? Or was something else going on? Why I chose it: When I read the first in the series, I immediately bought the […]

Still Good (Though No Journalist)

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Best for: People who enjoyed his first three books. In a nutshell: A young woman has fallen off (or jumped? Or been pushed from?) cliffs in the north of Iceland. The twist? Her sister and mother died at those same cliffs 25 years ago. So … what happened? Why I chose it: I clearly have found a genre I love — Icelandic mysteries. And since something like 10% of the population of Iceland will write a book at some point, my guess is once I […]

I like the Journalist Character Best

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Best for: People looking for a bit of mystery set in an interesting place. In a nutshell: Police officer Ari Thor is stuck in his town during a quarantine situation and looking into a 50-year-old mystery, while two seemingly unrelated crimes are looked into by journalist Isrun. Why I chose it: After I read the first, I ordered all four others in the series. No regrets. Review: A baby is kidnapped. A recovered substance abuser is hit by a car. A man’s wife was beaten […]

The Protagonist is an Ass, But the Book is Great

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Best for: People looking for a bit of mystery set in an interesting place. In a nutshell: Someone has been murdered, and the police and a highly motivated journalist are both on the story. Why I chose it: I loved the first one in this series. Review: Ari Thor is a police officer living in a small town in far nothern Iceland. After someone is found murdered in a nearby town, he and his boss are called in to assist, as the victim lived nearby. […]



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