the Nordic countries in the spotlight

The Nordic countries have distinguished themselves for more than twenty years in dark novels and detective novels. And what is the temperature today?

Despite a very low crime rate, Iceland is fertile ground for authors who imagine the most chilling dramas there. Often around people who have disappeared for a long time, either voluntarily, murdered or taken by the blizzard. Sometimes, melting ice reveals bodies… or fuels the mystery. This is the case of Before night falls by Eva Björg Ægisdottir, whose plot takes place in 1977. Marsi returns to the family home for the tenth anniversary of the disappearance of her sister Stina, and decides to solve it.

The author weaves several narrative threads, in a post-war Iceland marked by social tensions. False leads, buried secrets and dark landscapes create an oppressive atmosphere, where pain and silences weigh heavily, until the final revelation, which allows us to finally breathe. This novel was crowned best Icelandic thriller in 2024. Its author will be present in Lyon at the beginning of April 2026.

Intense suspense

In Huldaby Ragnar Jonasson, an infant disappears in Reykjavik on Christmas Eve. Twenty years later, in 1980, the baby’s stuffed toy resurfaced in a fishing lodge in the north of the country. Inspector Hulda and a colleague reopen the investigation. Between the personal tensions of the policewomen, the father’s inertia and village resentment, the suspense is intense, although the outcome is less impactful than in the author’s previous thrillers.

While they come out in pocket The tomorrows that sing, the latest adventures of Konrad, his headstrong police officer, Arnaldur Indridason delivers a new thriller with historical overtones. The plot of The end of the journey takes place in Copenhagen, around the hospitalization, after a fall, of the poet Jonas Hallgrimsson (1807-1845). Through flashbacks and extracts from poems, the author keeps the reader in suspense around the fate of Keli, a young shepherd, neighbor of Jonas, who has not given any sign of life for years. The master of the Nordic thriller also describes the daily life of Icelanders in Copenhagen, at the time when their island was still a Danish colony.

On the Danish side, precisely, the eleventh opus of Department Vthe successful series by Jussi Adler-Olsen dedicated to the cold case unit of the Copenhagen crime squad, has just been released. In The dead don’t sing, Helena, a French police officer, joins the team of atypical bloodhounds. An audio recording reaches them, which calls into question a suicide that occurred thirty years earlier. And soon, several apparently unrelated homicides will allow investigators to piece together a complex and captivating puzzle (although a little indigestible at the very end), involving former students of a prestigious singing school.