Inspector Erlendur

Gold Dagger Award winner Arnaldur Indridason's novels featuring Inspector Erlendur Sveinsson became international sensations on their way to selling millions of copies worldwide. The debut of morose detective Sveinsson finds the inspector and his team delving into the murder of a retiree with horrifying secrets.

Inspector Erlendur returns in this gripping Icelandic thriller When a skeleton is discovered half-buried in a construction site outside of ReykjavIk, Inspector Erlendur finds himself knee-deep in both a crime scene and an archeological dig. Bone by bone, the body is unearthed, and the brutalizing history of a family who lived near the building site comes to light along with it. Was the skeleton a man or a woman, a victim or a killer, and is this a simple case of murder or a long-concealed act of justice? As Erlendur tries to crack this cold case, he must also save his drug-addicted daughter from self-destruction and somehow glue his hopelessly fractured family back together. Like the chilly Nordic mysteries of Henning Mankell and Karen Fossum, Arnaldur Indridason delivers a stark police procedural full of humanity and pathos, a classic noir from a very cold place.

Inspector Erlendur Returns In this Award-winning International Bestseller. The Christmas rush is at its peak in a grand ReykjavIk hotel when Inspector Erlendur is called in to investigate a murder. The hotel Santa has been stabbed to death, and Erlendur and his fellow detectives find no shortage of suspects between the hotel staff and the international travelers staying for the holidays. As Christmas Day approaches, Erlendur must deal with his difficult daughter, pursue a possible romantic interest, and untangle a long-buried web of malice and greed to find the murderer. Voices is a brutal, soulful noir from the chilly shores of Iceland.

Inspector Erlendur returns in this international Bestseller Following an earthquake, the water level of an Icelandic lake suddenly falls, revealing a skeleton. Inspector Erlendur's investigation takes him back to the Cold War era, when bright, left-wing students in Iceland were sent to study in the "heavenly state" of Communist East Germany. Teeming with spies and informants, though, their "heavenly state" becomes a nightmare of betrayal and murder. Brilliantly weaving international espionage and a chilling cold case investigation, The Draining Lake is Arnaldur Indridason at his best.

The only author to win the Glass Key Award for Best Nordic Crime Novel two years in a row, Arnaldur Indridason has sold more than five million copies of his novels in more than 25 countries. A detective whose inner turmoil threatens to consume him, Erlendur Sveinsson is charged with investigating the death of an Asian boy-and confronting forces colder than Iceland's frigid clime. "A remarkable series."-New York Times Book Review

In Hypothermia, Inspector Erlendur contends with personal demons while investigating a woman's suicide. Although there are no signs of foul play, Erlendur gradually exposes a sinister plot.

In Outrage, Inspector Erlendur's colleague Elinborg takes center stage as a young man's death leads inexorably toward an even darker truth.

Arnaldur Indridason has been crime writing's best-kept secret ... until now. A man is making a crude leather mask with slits for eyes and mouth, and an iron spike fixed in the middle of the forehead. It is a 'death mask', once used by Icelandic farmers to slaughter calves. He has revenge in mind. Meanwhile, with Detective Erlendur absent, his baseball-loving colleague Sigurdur Oli is in the spotlight. A school reunion has left Sigurdur Oli dissatisfied with life in the police force. Iceland is enjoying an economic boom and young tycoons are busy partying with the international jet set. In contrast, Sigurdur Oli's relationship is on the rocks and soon even his position in the CID is compromised: when he agrees to visit a couple of blackmailers as a favour to a friend he walks in just as a woman is beaten unconscious. When she dies, Sigurdur Oli has a murder investigation on his hands. The evidence leads to debt collectors, extortionists, swinging parties. But when a chance link connects these enquiries to the activities of a group of young bankers, Sigurdur Oli finds himself investigating the very elite he had envied. Moving from the villas of ReykjavIk's banking elite to a sordid basement flat, Black Skies is a superb story of greed, pride and murder from one of Europe's most successful crime writers.

Somewhere in the wilderness of Iceland's frozen East Fjords, Erlendur is on the hunt. For a long lost brother, for a woman who vanished decades ago, for answers. He has come to confront the family tragedy that has haunted him all his life. But it is another missing-person story - the disappearance of Matthildur, lost in a snow-storm decades before but not yet forgotten - which reels him in. Slowly, the past begins to give up its secrets - of infidelities, betrayal, revenge and murder. There are blizzards, bitter cold, people at the limit of endurance. It is a journey that will have Erlendur wrestle all his personal demons but also find him at midnight, in an open grave, face to face with the evidence of long-buried crimes.