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  • Location: Hedinsfjörður, Siglufjörður, Ólafsfjörður, Reykjavik

Rupture

Rupture

Why a Booktrail?

1955: Secrets trapped in ice in a village isolated by distance and a population under quarantine..

  • ISBN: 978-1910633571
  • Genre: Crime, Mystery

What you need to know before your trail

1955. Two young couples move to the uninhabited, isolated fjord of Hedinsfjörður. One of the women meets her death in mysterious circumstances and the case is never solved. Fifty years later an old photograph comes to light, and it becomes clear that the couples may not have been alone on the fjord after all…

In nearby Siglufjörður, young policeman Ari Thór tries to piece together what really happened that fateful night.  Ísrún, a news reporter in Reykjavik helps out as she is investigating an increasingly chilling case of her own. Then when a child goes missing in broad daylight, things take on an ever darker tone. To make matters worse, the town of Siglufjörður is in quarantine with a virus spreading like the secrets of the past…

Travel Guide

Isolation in Iceland

Siglufjörður

Siglufjörður is a small town up in the north of Iceland – cold, isolated and separated from the ‘outside world’ by a tunnel which when it snows is unpassable. This really is a place where isolation lives and breathes. Now, there is a virus spreading across the region and the village is now one of forced isolation – medically induced  – a community gripped by panic and terror not helped by the media coverage and the fear that quarantine will lead to widespread death.

The Icelandic scenery, landscape and atmosphere are all painted with the same stunningly oppressive brush, its  haunting strokes evoking the fear, clinical fear of the people here and making the police work into a cold case (how ironic given the temperature here) even harder.

The Herring Era Museum is a must see

Hedinsfjörður

An isolated fjord where  two young couples move. For reasons unknown until the waters clear, they live there until one of them dies. Out here, no one can hear you scream and anything can happen and stay buried for years until a photograph leads back to the secret. Four people living in an even more isolated part of Iceland – the creepy nature, the utter and complete isolation here is absolute in every way – no one comes here . When footprints appear in the snow, the time to worry will begin.

Ólafsfjörður

Ólafsfjörður is the town at  the mouth of the fjord called Eyjafjörður. It’s connected to this via the 3.5 km one-lane Múli tunnel

 

Booktrailer Review

Susan @thebooktrailer

Maybe the strap line to this book should read ‘Just when you thought it was safe to go back to Siglufjörður..” as like in the jaws of that famous shark, this book has just as much bite and shock factor. This great white is a vast icy landscape which chills to the core and I have been looking forward to going back there and was not disappointed. It’s even more claustrophobic and eerie than the last time I was there. A cold case, a weird cold case with people disappearing from an isolated fjord, the crux this time is a local policeman and an  outsider – a journalist no less –  tackling sensitive issues amongst those who have lived there for years.

Very clever to merge an historical case with a modern day mystery – icy hard snowballs bombard you from each and every angle, icicles bomb down from above – that’s how reading this book feels to be. There is an underlying current of evil, of hardcore death and murder, of a mystery unfurling across the centuries, and of isolation putting up one ice wall after another to keep out anyone who dares enter.

Everything can turn on a knife edge in this Dark Iceland and it’s becoming an obsession of mine. So much depth and intrigue in a relatively short read – at 244 pages in the print copy, that is no easy feat. Chillingly brilliant.

 

Booktrail Boarding Pass Information: Rupture

Author/Guide:Ragnar Jonasson  Destination: Hedinsfjörður, Siglufjörður, Ólafsfjörður, Reykjavik  Departure Time: 2000s, 1950s

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