The Darkness Knows

February 1, 2021

Retired detective Konrad returns to a cold case that has haunted him for three decades: the disappearance of a businessman whose body has just been found deep in the Langjokull glacier. First in a new series from CWA Gold Dagger Award and two-time Glass Key winner Indridason; with a 40,000-copy first printing.

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June 15, 2021
The reopening of a cold case brings sketchy characters out of the woodwork and triggers deep emotion in a retired detective. While exploring an Icelandic glacier, a group of German tourists stumble upon the well-preserved corpse of Sigurvin, a young man who disappeared 30 years ago. Konr�d, the retired detective who worked the case, gets a call from his friend Svanhildur, a pathologist at the National Hospital, urging him to take a look at the body. A large head wound confirms that the death was most likely murder. Konr�d has long believed that Hjaltal�n, a man who threatened Sigurvin, was responsible for his death. The suspect was never brought to justice but suffered public infamy. When Hjaltal�n, now elderly and frail, is taken into custody, he requests a meeting with Konr�d, professes his innocence, and pleads to be exonerated--and then, days later, he dies. Once Konr�d reluctantly begins a new investigation, he notices glaring omissions in the record and gets an odd visit from a woman whose brother, killed in a suspicious car accident, may have witnessed the crime as a child. His labyrinthine probe unearths secrets that have been buried for decades. Indridason methodically builds a portrait of Iceland with a large cast of nuanced characters unsettled by past events. In dredging up the past, Konr�d must also confront his complex relationship with his own abusive father, whose murder was unsolved as well. The intricate plot poignantly depicts community crosscurrents, past and present.

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Starred review from July 12, 2021
At the start of Indridason’s superb sequel to 2017’s The Shadow District, a melting glacier reveals the body of Reykjavík businessman Sigurvin, who has been missing for 30 years. The discovery comes as a shock to retired detective Konrád, who worked on the case back then, and leads to the rearrest and imprisonment of Hjaltalín, a disgruntled associate of Sigurvin’s, who was arrested after Sigurvin vanished and released due to lack of evidence. Now dying, Hjaltalín insists that Konrád, who was never convinced of Hjaltalín’s guilt, find the real killer by striking at Konrád’s Achilles’ heel, his vicious sham-medium father, “a bit of a devil.” Konrád, who suspects he has inherited his father’s evil nature, fears he can’t restrain himself from violently attacking the criminals he pursues. Konrád painstakingly unravels a tangled skein of old betrayals and deceit in a city, Reykjavík, where he increasingly feels like a tourist, uncovering layer after layer of culpability. As in the old Icelandic sagas, the author strips bare such archetypal human concerns as revenge, honor, and family loyalty. Konrád, who still misses his beloved wife six years after she died of cancer, is an irresistible lead. Indridason is writing at the top of his game.

July 9, 2021

A receding glacier in Iceland gives up a long-held secret when a tour guide discovers a body in the melting ice. The police quickly identify the victim as Sigurvin, a businessman who had gone missing 30 years earlier, in 1985, and was presumed murdered. Sigurvin was last seen with a man named Hjaltal�n, a former business partner; they reportedly had argued shortly before Sigurvin's disappearance. Hjaltal�n always claimed innocence in Sigurvin's case, but his life was ruined by accusations of culpability. Now the police have brought Hjaltal�n back in for questioning, and he refuses to speak with anyone except Konr�d, a retired police detective who had led the original investigation. The case has haunted Konr�d for years, and he is soon compelled to investigate on his own, as fresh leads appear. VERDICT Last seen in The Shadow District, detective Konr�d is back for the launch of his own series. The award-winning Indridason has a long track record of writing grimly compelling Nordic crime thrillers, but this latest title moves at the pace of its retired protagonist. Konr�d is often mired in his past, and there's little e suspense as he slowly pursues suspects in a decades-old murder.--Melissa DeWild, Comstock Park, MI

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August 20, 2021
Retired Rekjavik detective Konr�d is drawn back to the world he knows best when the body of a missing person that haunted him turns up in a melting glacier. Wealthy fisherman Sigurvin's car was found at Rejkjavik's abandoned water tanks, but despite years of hunting, Konr�d found no sign of the fisherman. Many believed that his business partner, Hjaltal�n, was responsible and he spent his life under that cloud. But, as media attention returns to Sigurvin's case, a woman turns up begging Konr�d to investigate her brother's death in a recent unsolved hit and run. When her brother Villi was a young child, he met a strange, threatening man among the abandoned water tanks where Sigurvin disappeared. Konr�d knows instinctively that Villi is the key to solving the Sigurvin's mystery, and doggedly sets about breaking down decades of lies created to separate Icelanders' small worlds. A rewarding gumshoe investigation focused on complex deceptions and unlikely coincidences; introspective Konr�d faces his failures, both in marriage and policing here, and finds resolution, if not peace

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