Reykjavik Wartime Mystery

The Shadow District is the stunning first book in the compelling new series from award-winning Icelandic author Arnaldur Indridason, whom reviewers are calling "a master." A 90-year-old man is found dead in his bed, smothered with his own pillow. On his desk the police find newspaper cuttings about a murder case dating from the Second World War, when a young woman was found strangled behind Reykjavik's National Theatre. Konrad, a former detective, is bored with retirement and remembers the crime. He grew up in 'the shadow district', a rough neighborhood bordered by the National Theatre. Why would someone be interested in that crime now? He starts his own unofficial enquiry. Alternating between Konrad's investigation and the original police inquiry, we discover that two girls had been attacked in oddly similar circumstances. Did the police arrest the wrong man? How are these cases linked across the decades? And who is the old man? A deeply compassionate story of old crimes and their consequences, The Shadow District is the first in a thrilling new series of novels by the worldwide bestselling author Arnaldur Indridason.

Reykjavik, August 1941. When a travelling sales rep is found murdered in a Reykjavik flat, killed by a bullet from a Colt 45, the police initially suspect a member of the Allied occupation force. The British are in the process of handing over to the Americans and the streets of Reykjavik are crawling with servicemen whose relations with the local women are a major cause for concern. Flovent, Reykjavik's sole detective, is joined by the young military policeman Thorson, the son of Icelandic emigrants to Canada. Their investigation focuses on a family of German residents, the retired doctor Rudolf Lunden and his estranged son Felix, who is on the run, suspected of being a spy. Flovent and Thorson race to solve the case before US Counterintelligence can take it out of their hands, amid rumours of a pending visit by Churchill. But the plot thickens as evidence emerges of dubious experiments carried out on Icelandic schoolboys in the 1930s, while Thorson becomes increasingly suspicious of the role played by the murdered man's former girlfriend, Vera, and her British soldier lover.