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Ragnar Jónasson

Biography

Ragnar Jónasson

Ragnar Jónasson is an international #1 bestselling author who has sold over three million books in 36 countries worldwide. His books include the Dark Iceland series and the Hulda series. Jónasson was born in Reykjavik, Iceland, where he also works as an investment banker and teaches copyright law at Reykjavik University. He has previously worked on radio and television, including as a TV news reporter for the Icelandic National Broadcasting Service, and, since the age of 17, has translated 14 of Agatha Christie's novels. Jónasson is the co-founder of the Reykjavik international crime writing festival Iceland Noir. His critically acclaimed international bestseller THE DARKNESS is soon to be a major TV series, and OUTSIDE is soon to be a feature film. Jónasson lives in Reykjavik with his wife and two daughters.

Ragnar Jónasson

Books by Ragnar Jónasson

by Ragnar Jónasson and Katrín Jakobsdóttir - Fiction, Mystery

Iceland, 1956. Fourteen-year-old Lára decides to spend the summer working for a couple on the small island of Videy, just off the coast of Reykjavík. In early August, the girl disappears without a trace. Time passes, and the mystery becomes Iceland‘s most infamous unsolved case. What happened to the young girl? Is she still alive? Did she leave the island, or did something happen to her there? Thirty years later, as the city of Reykjavík celebrates its 200th anniversary, journalist Valur Robertsson begins his own investigation into Lára's case. But as he draws closer to discovering the secret, and with the eyes of Reykjavík upon him, it soon becomes clear that Lára's disappearance is a mystery that someone will stop at nothing to keep unsolved.

by Ragnar Jónasson - Fiction, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller

When a deadly snowstorm strikes the Icelandic highlands, four friends seek shelter in a small, abandoned hunting lodge. It is in the middle of nowhere, and there's no way of communicating with the outside world. As the night darkens and fears intensify, an old tragedy gradually surfaces --- one that forever changed the course of their friendship. Those dark memories could hold the key to the mystery the friends now find themselves in. And whether they will survive until morning.

by Ragnar Jónasson - Fiction, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller

Una wants nothing more than to teach, but she has been unable to secure steady employment in Reykjavík. As darkness descends throughout the bleak winter in the remote fishing hamlet of Skálar, Una finds herself more often than not in her rented attic space --- the site of a local legendary haunting --- drinking her loneliness away. She is plagued by nightmares of a little girl in a white dress singing a lullaby. And when a sudden tragedy echoes an event long buried in Skálar’s past, the villagers become even more guarded, leaving a suspicious Una seeking to uncover a shocking truth that’s been kept secret for generations.

by Ragnar Jónasson - Fiction, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller

1987. An isolated farm house in the east of Iceland. The snowstorm should have shut everybody out. But it didn't. The couple should never have let him in. But they did. An unexpected guest, a liar, a killer. Not all will survive the night. And Detective Inspector Hulda Hermannsdóttir will be haunted forever. THE MIST is the final nail-biting installment in Ragnar Jonasson's critically acclaimed Hidden Iceland series.

by Ragnar Jónasson - Fiction, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller

Autumn of 1987 takes a young couple on a romantic trip in the Westfjords holiday --- a trip that gets an unexpected ending and has catastrophic consequences. Ten years later, a small group of friends go for a weekend in an old hunting lodge in Elliðaey --- a place completely cut off from the outside world --- to reconnect. But one of them isn't going to make it out alive. And Detective Inspector Hulda Hermannsdóttir is determined to find the truth in the darkness.

written by Ragnar Jónasson, translated by Quentin Bates - Fiction, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller

Young policeman Ari Thór tries to solve a 50-year-old murder when new evidence surfaces. But the case proves difficult in a town where no one wants to know the truth, where secrets are a way of life. He's assisted by Ísrún, a news reporter in Reykjavik who is investigating an increasingly chilling case of her own. Things take a sinister turn when a child goes missing in broad daylight. With a stalker on the loose, and the town in quarantine, the past just might come back to haunt them.

by Ragnar Jónasson - Fiction, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller

The body of a young Russian woman washes up on an Icelandic shore. After a cursory investigation, the death is declared a suicide and the case is quietly closed. Over a year later, Detective Inspector Hulda Hermannsdóttir of the Reykjavík police is forced into early retirement at 64. But before she leaves, she is given two weeks to solve a single cold case of her choice. She knows which one: the Russian woman whose hope for asylum ended on the dark, cold shore of an unfamiliar country. Soon Hulda discovers that another young woman vanished at the same time, and that no one is telling her the whole story. Even her colleagues in the police seem determined to put the brakes on her investigation.

by Ragnar Jónasson - Fiction, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller

On the shores of a tranquil fjord in Northern Iceland, a man is brutally beaten to death on a bright summer's night. A young reporter leaves Reykajvik to investigate on her own, unaware that an innocent person's life hangs in the balance. Ari Thor Arason and his colleagues on the tiny police force in Siglufjordur struggle with an increasingly perplexing case, while their own serious personal problems push them to the limit. What secrets does the dead man harbour, and what is the young reporter hiding? As silent, unspoken horrors from the past threaten them all, and the darkness deepens, it's a race against time to find the killer before someone else dies.

by Ragnar Jónasson - Fiction, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller

Ari Thor Arason is a local policeman who has an uneasy relationship with the villagers in an idyllically quiet fishing village in Northern Iceland --- where no one locks their doors. The peace of this close-knit community is shattered by a murder. One of Ari’s colleagues is gunned down at point-blank range in the dead of night in a deserted house. With a killer on the loose and the dark Arctic waters closing in, it falls to Ari Thor to piece together a puzzle that involves a new mayor and a psychiatric ward in Reykjavik. It becomes all too clear that tragic events from the past are weaving a sinister spell that may threaten them all.

by Ragnar Jónasson - Crime, Fiction, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller

Hailed for combining the darkness of Nordic Noir with classic mystery writing, author Ragnar Jonasson’s books are haunting, atmospheric, and complex. RUPTURE, the latest Ari Thór thriller, delivers another dark mystery that is chillingly stunning with its complexity and fluidity. Young policeman Ari Thór tries to solve a 50-year-old murder when new evidence surfaces. But the case proves difficult in a town where no one wants to know the truth, where secrets are a way of life. He's assisted by Ísrún, a news reporter in Reykjavik who is investigating an increasingly chilling case of her own. Things take a sinister turn when a child goes missing in broad daylight. With a stalker on the loose, and the town in quarantine, the past might just come back to haunt them.

by Ragnar Jónasson - Fiction, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller

Siglufjörður is an idyllically quiet fishing village in Northern Iceland, where no one locks their doors. Ari Thór Arason is a rookie policeman on his first posting, far from his girlfriend in Reykjavik --- with a past that he’s unable to leave behind. When a young woman is found lying half-naked in the snow, bleeding and unconscious, and a highly esteemed, elderly writer falls to his death in the local theater, Ari is dragged straight into the heart of a community where he can trust no one, and secrets and lies are a way of life. Past plays tag with the present and the claustrophobic tension mounts, while Ari is thrust ever deeper into his own darkness --- blinded by snow, and with a killer on the loose.