Yrsa Sigurdardottir
Yrsa Sigurðardóttir is an Icelandic writer, of both crime-novels and children's fiction. She has been writing since 1998. Her début crime-novel was translated into English by Bernard Scudder.
When the body of a young woman—badly beaten and with pins inserted into her feet—is found at a New Age health resort in a renovated farmhouse, lawyer and single mother of two Thóra Guðmundsdóttir is called upon to represent the chief suspect, the resort's owner. But upon her arrival she encounters more than a fresh corpse—local legend has it that the resort, located in the mystical region of Snæfellsnes on Iceland's west coast, is haunted. At first Thóra dismisses the claims as nothing more than myth and superstition, but even she can't explain the bizarre occurrences she witnesses in her search for answers. As Thóra digs deeper into the farm's past, she discovers long-buried information on the property's disturbing history, and her once-solid view of reality begins to waver. Are the hauntings real, or just a case of folklore gone wild? And, more important, does the farm's eerie past have something to do with the murder? When another body is discovered—looking very much like the first Thóra is forced to put aside her doubts and confront the horrors of the present before a twisted killer strikes again.