Iceland 1934: Two boys playing in the lava fields that surround their isolated farmsteads see something they shouldn't have. The consequences will haunt them and their families for generations. Iceland 2009: the credit crunch bites. The currency has been devalued, banks nationalized, savings annihilated, lives ruined. Grassroots revolution is in the air, as is the feeling that someone ought to pay…ought to pay the blood price. And in a country with a population of just 300,000 souls, in a country where everyone knows everybody, it isn't hard to draw up a list of exactly who is responsible. And then, one-by-one, to cross them off. Iceland 2010: As bankers and politicians start to die, at home and abroad, it is up to Magnus Jonson to unravel the web of conspirators before they strike again. But while Magnus investigates the crimes of the present, the crimes of the past are catching up with him

Iceland, midwinter: the days are fleeting, the nights endless and detective Magnus Jonson has been sent to an isolated fishing village in the West Fjords to investigate the possible homicide of a road construction worker. Ringed by steep mountains, this bleak village is cut off from the rest of Iceland and from the modern world. The locals are adamant that Iceland’s legendary huldufólk — hidden people — had a hand in the death. Magnus finds their superstition suspicious... As he digs deeper, Magnus discovers that the victim was not a popular man, leading him to suspect that other, more human, passions are at work

When a polar bear is sighted in a sleepy Icelandic fishing village, then shot dead by local policeman Constable Halldr, it triggers a debate in the local community. Was Halldr a hero for killing the bear, or should the animal have been protected? Animal rights activists in the area see the constable as a villain, and when days later the dead body of Halldr is discovered at a remote beauty spot, the activists are immediately under suspicion. As Sergeant Magnus Ragnarsson and his colleague Detective Vigds Audardtti begin to investigate the policeman’s murder, they soon discover that things are not as clear-cut as might first appear. By degrees, Magnus and Vigds are drawn into this small and complex community — one riven with rivalries and grudges — in search of a deadly killer

Iceland, 2017: When a young Italian tourist is found brutally murdered at a sacred church in northern Iceland, Magnus Jonson, newly returned to the Reykjavík police force, is called in to investigate. At the scene, he finds a stunned TV crew, there to film a documentary on the life of the legendary Viking, Gudrid the Wanderer. Magnus quickly begins to suspect that there may be more links to the murdered woman than anyone in the film crew will acknowledge. As jealousies come to the surface, new tensions replace old friendships, and history begins to rewrite itself, a shocking second murder leads Magnus to question everything he thought he knew

When sixteen-year-old Dísa is given five bitcoin by her divorced father she is unimpressed: she hasn’t heard of the cryptocurrency, and five of anything can’t be worth very much. But a year later, when her grandparents are about to lose the farm near the Icelandic village of Dalvík in the north of Iceland, where their family has lived for centuries, quiet, unassuming Dísa is able to rescue it with the profits from her astute trading of her father’s gift. Unknown to Dísa, her mother Helga catches the cryptocurrency bug. Not only does Helga invest in Thomocoin, a new cryptocurrency sweeping Iceland, but she persuades many of her neighbours in Dalvík to invest too, taking a cut for herself. Helga is found murdered on the hillside above the farm and Inspector Magnus Jonson investigates. Magnus realizes that Dísa, now a nineteen-year-old student, can help him unveil the shadowy forces behind Thomocoin. But torn between loyalty to her family and fear for her life, Dísa has other ideas

Iceland 1940. Britain invades Iceland. Lieutenant Tom Marks is a British officer tasked with defending Whale Fjord. He meets Kristín, a young widow from a nearby farm, who has a small son. Tom is smitten. Iceland 2023. Inspector Magnus Ragnarsson is called to the shores of Whale Fjord where the skeletons of a man and a woman have been discovered, both shot with British wartime bullets. Magnus uncovers a web of anger and revenge that stretches back eighty years and forward to a shocking murder in Reykjavík