Bernard Scudder Books

"Alone in the middle of the North Atlantic, Iceland is a world unto itself. It is a land co-existing with the ocean, a country of enchanting nature and dramatic contrasts--volcanoes, glaciers, lakes and waterfalls. Iceland is more than twice the size of Denmark and the most sparsely populated country in Europe. Permanently settled by Nordic people only 1,100 years ago, Iceland has developed a unique society and philosophy of life, while preserving the language and culture of its early days." -- Page [4] cover.

On a January day the Reykjavik police are called to a block of flats where a body has been found: a young boy frozen to the ground in a pool of his own blood. The discovery of a stab wound on his stomach extinguishes any hope that this was an accident. Erlendur & his team embark on their investigation with little to go on.

The third novel in the award-winning Reykjavik Murder Mysteries. The Christmas rush is under way in a big Reykjavik hotel when the police are called to the scene of a murder. The hotel doorman (and long-time resident of its basement) has been stabbed to death. With the hotel fully booked, the manager is desperate to keep the murder under wraps and his reputation intact. Detectives Erlendur and Sigurdur Oli discover that the dead man had had a childhood brush with fame and that two old 45s on which he had sung have become prized collectors’ items. Estranged from his family for decades, why had the man continued to pay secret visits to his boyhood home? As Detective Elinborg investigates a separate case of child abuse, and Erlendur continues to struggle both with his troubled family relationships and the ghosts of his own youth, their parallel stories probe deeper into the riddle of this latest Reykjavik Murder Mystery.

In seinem Roman erzählt der isländische Autor die Geschichte einer Neunjährigen, die zum ersten Mal das Elternhaus an der Küste Islands verläßt. Als Strafe für einen Ladendiebstahl muß sie den Sommer auf einem Bauernhof im Landesinneren verbringen. Allein unter schweigsamen Bauern deutet sie die Rätsel ihrer Umgebung und ihres neuen Lebens mit Hilfe der Phantasie. "Noch viele Tage nach der Lektüre des 'Schwan' war ich wie verzaubert. In diesem Buch werden Sie einen großen europäischen Romancier entdecken, dem es mit einzigartiger Finesse gelingt, das Leben eines heranwachsenden Mädchens einzufangen." (Milan Kundera.)