Review | The Mist | Ragnar Jónasson

We’re delighted to be sharing Laura’s thoughts about The Mist by Ragnar Jónasson on the Penguin tour today.

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 Hulda will be haunted forever . . .

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The Mist is my favourite book so far this year, I was captivated from the beginning.

This is a crime thriller with themes of loss, isolation and death. It’s the final book of the Hidden Iceland series and I am now on the hunt for the first two books, I love this author! On reading he has translated books by Agatha Christie I felt a resemblance reading The Mist from Christie’s dark novels like And Then There Were None.

Set in 1987 at Christmas, Erla and her husband live in an isolated farmhouse in East Iceland. Stuck in a snowstorm waiting to enjoy their Christmas Eve dinner, they are surprised to hear a knock at the door.

Two months later Detective Hulda Hermannsdottir has returned to work from compassionate leave to pick up a case of a missing teenage girl and a new case of bodies found in an isolated farm.

I felt lots of emotions reading this book. I could feel the tension building at the farmhouse before Christmas, the tragedy Hulda had to deal with and the shock discovering the twist.  I was gripped by the incredible plot, stunning Icelandic scenery and the dark twist at the end.

I looked forward to reading the rest of the trilogy, for me they will be in chronological order.

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RAGNAR JÓNASSON was born in Reykjavik, Iceland, where he works as a writer and a lawyer. He also teaches copyright law at Reykjavik University, and has worked as a TV news reporter for Icelandic National Broadcasting Service. He is the author of the DARK ICELAND series (Snowblind, Nightblind, Blackout, Rupture and Whiteout) and the HIDDEN ICELAND series (The Darkness, The Island).

Ragnar is the co-founder of Iceland Noir, Iceland’s first crime fiction festival. From the age of 17, Ragnar translated 14 Agatha Christie novels into Icelandic; a practice that has inspired his own writing. @Ragnarjo

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