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The Reckoning

A Completely Chilling Thriller, from the Queen of Icelandic Noir

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The Reckoning

By: Yrsa Sigurdardottir, Victoria Cribb - translator
Narrated by: Lucy Paterson
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Translated from Icelandic by Victoria Cribb

'Yrsa is a magnificent writer' Karin Slaughter

'The queen of Icelandic thriller writers' Guardian

A chilling note written by a thirteen-year-old predicting the deaths of six people is found in a time capsule, ten years after it was buried. Can it be a real threat?

Detective Huldar turns to psychologist Freyja to help understand the child who hid the message.

But the discovery of the letter coincides with a string of murders. All of the victims match the initials from the note.

Huldar and Freyja must race to identify the writer and the murderer, before the rest of the targets are killed...

'One of the best books I've read for a long time: dark, creepy, and gripping from beginning to end.' Stuart MacBride

'Will give you thrills and chills in equal measures.' Cosmopolitan Crime Crime Thrillers Europe International Mystery & Crime Mystery Suspense Thriller Thriller & Suspense Fiction Murder
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Continue the series
The Absolution cover art
The Absolution By: Yrsa Sigurdardottir

Critic reviews

THE RECKONING is another chilling, atmospheric tale from the undisputed Queen of Icelandic Noir. I loved it. (Simon Kernick)
There's no waffle in The Reckoning: it is brutal, baroque and ends with a brilliant last-minute twist.
One of the best books I've read for a long time: dark, creepy, and gripping from beginning to end. (Stuart MacBride, author of the Logan McRae series)
It's addictive, bleak, and will give you thrills and chills in equal measures.
Yrsa Sigurdardóttir has with her large-scale and genuinely intelligent stories attempted to find the core of Iceland's distinctive society, and thus pushed the Icelandic crime novel tradition many steps forward. (Arne Dahl)
Yrsa Sigurðardóttir's incredible gift of mixing the macabre and the poignant, together with the astute observations of the ordinary life, sprinkled with a dark sense of humour, keeps on giving in buckets. Her imagination knows no bounds, turning the most ordinary objects into deadly weapons... The nuanced writing encompasses the thriller's overwhelming sense of doom as it explores the failings of the society to protect victims. (Crime Review)
A dark story by a brilliant author. A densely plotted, multifaceted and compelling book. Exceeds most novels in the thriller genre. (Erik Axl Sund)
Praise for THE LEGACY
Iceland's outstanding crime novelist
Yrsa remains the queen of Icelandic thriller writers.
If you like your crime fiction dark and engaging, look no further. THE LEGACY is as brutal as it gets. A cracking start to a new series by Yrsa Sigurdardottir.
All stars
Most relevant
Enjoyed this one more than the first in the series. Fast pace and grabbed my interest all the time. I found the narrator very good and really bought the story to life. Looking forward to the next in the series.

Thoroughly enjoyable

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Quite grisly in its murderous content. Not for the faint hearted but a good listen with lots of twists even at the end. Lots of characters but well drawn together.

Quite shocking but a good listen

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Love both Hulda/Freya books and hope there are more in this series. There are serious issues in plot but relationship between main characters lightens things.

Very good read

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but hard for some victims of child abuse i should imagine. I loved the theme of reckoning. Appropriate because alot of plot is about the account firm staff.

i wish in this country we could adopt more of the attitudes our heros had, and shame anyone with peadofile tendancies. I wish we could go further , like the villains survivors , and Shame People who have inflicted abuse, instead of the ' don't speak ill of the dead' attitude we have. Yes, like the storyline , don't give them a properfuneral while they leave live scott free>ues, peadoviles really think they are a justified alternative, that they have the right to abuse their children, that their children won't remember, and won't dare , expose them, so they can maintain their narcisistic attidude , Maybe shaming them in the way Jimmy Saville and others did will prevent some harm. For a start, remind people that death doesn't finish criminal procedings in Uk, and we certainly donn't have a ten year, everything on the scriminal slate is wiped cleann, as the author seems to say happens in iceland.
i wish more people knew that families hurt by peodiviles can sue the estate of the diseased culperpable like victims of Saville did. So once our nation starts to sue them, they will know we people have an incentive to shame them. Also people in their circles who knew what they were up to won't let the abuse continure.
i wish we had more ways of shaming them openly, and wish the author lots of success in any similar novels she composes.

excellent, hard hitting, necessary listening

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Loved it as much as all the other books I've read by Yrsa!
Can't recommend it enough x

Love Yrsa!

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