Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Rupture
    Unavailable
    Rupture
    Unavailable
    Rupture
    Ebook315 pages5 hours

    Rupture

    By Ragnar Jónasson

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    THE THIRD INSTALMENT IN THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLING DARK ICELAND SERIES

    OVER A MILLION COPIES SOLD

    With a stalker on the loose and the town of Siglufjörður in quarantine, a child goes missing, as Icelandic police officer Ari Thór Arason investigates the cold case of a mysterious death on an isolated fjord…

    'A world-class crime writer'     Sunday Times

    ‘Ragnar does claustrophobia beautifully’ Ann Cleeves

    ‘A modern take on an Agatha Christie-style mystery, as twisty as any slalom…’ Ian Rankin

     ________________

    1955.Two young couples move to the uninhabited, isolated fjord of Hedinsfjörður. Their stay ends abruptly when one of the women meets her death in mysterious circumstances. 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, in a town where no one wants to know, where secrets are a way of life. He’s assisted by Ísrún, a news reporter in Reykjavik, who is investigating an increasingly chilling case of her own. Things take a sinister turn when a child goes missing in broad daylight. With a stalker on the loose, and the town of Siglufjörður in quarantine, the past might just come back to haunt them.

    Haunting, frightening and complex, Rupture is a dark and atmospheric thriller from one of Iceland’s foremost crime writers.

    ________________

    ‘Traditional and beautifully finessed… morally more equivocal than most traditional whodunnits, and it offers alluring glimpses of darker, and infinitely more threatening horizons’     Independent

    ‘Jonasson’s books have breathed new life into Nordic noir’ Jake Kerridge, Sunday Express

    'British aficionados of Nordic Noir are familiar with two excellent Icelandic writers, Arnaldur Indridason and Yrsa Sigurdardottir. Here’s a third: Ragnar Jónasson … the darkness and cold are palpable’ Marcel Berlins, Times

    ’Ragnar Jónasson writes with a chilling, poetic beauty’ Peter James

    ‘Chilling, poetic beauty… a must-read!’ Peter James

    ‘A clever, complex and haunting thriller … unexpected and gripping’ Lancashire Post

    ‘A chiller of a thriller’ Washington Post

    ‘Puts a lively, sophisticated spin on the Agatha Christie model, taking it down intriguing dark alleys’ Kirkus Reviews

    ‘The best sort of gloomy storytelling’ Chicago Tribune

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherORENDA BOOKS
    Release dateDec 24, 2016
    ISBN9781910633588
    Unavailable
    Rupture
    Author

    Ragnar Jónasson

    RAGNAR JÓNASSON is an international number one award-winning and bestselling author who has sold over four million books in thirty-six territories worldwide. He is the only Icelandic author to have entered the Wall Street Journal bestseller list. Jónasson was born in Reykjavik, where he also teaches copyright law at Reyk­javík University. He has previously worked on radio and television, including as a TV news reporter, and, since the age of seventeen, has translated fourteen of Agatha Christie’s novels into Icelandic. He is the co-founder of the Reykjavík internation­al crime writing festival Iceland Noir. His critically ac­claimed international bestseller The Darkness is soon to be a major CBS Studios TV series, starring Lena Olin as Hulda, directed by Lasse Hallstrom. Ragnar's novel, Outside, is in development as a feature film by Ridley Scott's production company.

    Read more from Ragnar Jónasson

    Related to Rupture

    Related ebooks

    Suspense For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Avenger’s End Game

      Mar 23, 2022

      Avenger’s End Game
      5 min read

    • Article

      It’s Grim Up North

      May 22, 2022

      It’s Grim Up North
      2 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Dec 4, 2023

      It strikes me that a sense of place and atmosphere are somewhat nebulous things in works of fiction. As a novelist myself, I’m always extremely gratified if readers comment favourably on these aspects of my work, but I never really know how I did it,

      3 min read

    • Article

      Dance Macabre

      Jul 17, 2019

      Just as James Bond has a habit of doing every couple of years, British secret agent Christopher Winter has returned. 007, however, never had to deal with demons or black magic. Or repressed memories of a sinister former life he knew nothing about… Tw

      1 min read

    • Article

      Snap Judgement

      Mar 2, 2023

      Snap Judgement
      2 min read

    • Article

      Revengers Assemble

      Mar 3, 2022

      Revengers Assemble
      12 min read

    • Article

      The Poetry Of Fear

      Jun 27, 2023

      The Poetry Of Fear
      8 min read

    • Article

      The Beckoning Arctic

      Apr 2, 2020

      The Beckoning Arctic
      8 min read

    • Article

      The Magic Of Christmas Is Inside A Book

      Nov 3, 2021

      The once in a hundred year athlete tells his full story for the very first time. This is the must read autobiography of the year. This Christmas, one brave boy and his toy are about to change everything… Love happens when you least expect it…Set in i

      1 min read

    • Article

      WRITING WINTER wonderlands

      Nov 2, 2023

      WRITING WINTER wonderlands
      3 min read

    • Article

      The Kindness

      Aug 9, 2023

      The Kindness
      1 min read

    • Article

      It Takes A Village

      Oct 4, 2023

      It Takes A Village
      3 min read

    • Article

      Children's Books

      Sep 20, 2023

      Picture books are getting shorter. While older readers will recall the languid suspense of stories such as Dogger and Mr Bear SquashYou-All-Flat, most contemporary picture books are a fraction of the length, to cater for the assumed shorter attention

      3 min read

    • Article

      Great Read

      Feb 23, 2022

      Great Read
      4 min read

    • Article

      Cosy Crime

      Apr 26, 2024

      THERE’S nothing like losing yourself in the pages of a juicy murder mystery, reading a book from cover to cover in a single sitting because you simply can’t put it down until the killer is unmasked. But sometimes if you finish late at night it can be

      3 min read

    • Article

      A “Lost” Novel Better Left Unfound

      Mar 28, 2024

      “THE LOST NOVEL,” IT SAYS HERE, ON the cover of Until August, which is published ten years after the death of its author, the Colombian Nobel Prize winner Gabriel García Márquez. And why shouldn’t they trumpet it? Márquez was by common consent one of

      5 min read

    • Article

      MYSTERY & INTRIGUE

      Dec 30, 2022

      By RICHARD OSMAN Viking The intrepid oldies of the Thursday Murder Club – Joyce, Elizabeth, Ibrahim and Ron – are back for their third adventure and it’s a corker. This time they’re drawn into the mystery of TV reporter Bethany Waites, who was inves

      3 min read

    • Article

      Yuletide Reads

      Dec 8, 2023

      When the Creed family moves to a rural town, they discover a mysterious burial ground that brings the dead back to life. It is when their cat dies, tragedy befalls them, which leads to a series of horrifying events. Stephen King, in this book, master

      1 min read

    • Article

      Reading CORNER

      Sep 11, 2022

      Raise a glass to this devilishly clever mystery A twisty crime drama with emotional depth, The Last Party takes us to scenic North Wales and introduces us to feisty Ffion Morgan, a police detective with her own share of troubles. As the murder-myste

      3 min read

    • Article

      All I Want For Christmas

      Dec 16, 2020

      IT was more than an icicle. More like an icy boulder, oversized and murkily white, faceted like a cartoon jewel and, shortly, dripping. It had lurked beneath a low stone bridge at the bottom of the wood, where sycamore thickets bald for winter gave w

      18 min read

    • Article

      Cold Steel Rail

      Sep 30, 2018

      By Stephen Done IT IS the Christmas of 1954 on the West Bridge branch of the old Leicester & Swannington Railway, and the mysterious murder of the crossing keeper at the fictional Black Spinney Crossing, near Desford, has Inspector Charles Vignoles

      1 min read

    Reviews for Rupture

    4/5

    77 ratings9 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Best for: People looking for a bit of mystery set in an interesting place.In a nutshell: Police officer Ari Thor is stuck in his town during a quarantine situation and looking into a 50-year-old mystery, while two seemingly unrelated crimes are looked into by journalist Isrun.Why I chose it: After I read the first, I ordered all four others in the series. No regrets.Review:A baby is kidnapped. A recovered substance abuser is hit by a car. A man’s wife was beaten to death. A nephew is wondering if his aunt died by suicide or was murdered. Some of these stories might be related. How we find that out is interesting.Ari Thor is less of an ass in this one. He’s a bit of a … blowhard? At one point he’s telling a story that affects someone else’s life and he chooses to stretch out the storytelling while that person is clearly distressed. I know the readers need to learn the story, but I feel that the author could have found a different way to do this. Unless, as I do suspect, the author doesn’t particularly like his protagonist.I was excited to see that the same journalist from the second book has a big role to play. Her background and way of being is just more interesting to me, and I appreciate how she is woven into these stories.When the twists of this particular story were revealed, I appreciated that while I didn’t figure them out, they weren’t entirely impossible to have sorted out. I don’t read these books in the hopes that I’ll sort out what’s happened; I just like reading stories set in interesting places. So far the outcomes are never totally outside the realm of possibility, but are surprising enough to be fun.
    • 4/5
      A really enjoyable read if you have read the earlier books in the series, set in contemporary Iceland in both Siglufjordur (northern Iceland) and Reykjavik, and are interested in how the characters develop as well as the mystery itself.The isolation of the close knitted Siglufjordur community is well evoked, as well as the tensions with modern developments, such as the tunnels making access easier, so that Reykjavik residents might now buy houses as holiday homes. Reykjavik comes across as just another city, albeit small, but provides the contrast the rural Siglufjordur setting.For me, the books are also literary tourism, as we visited the Siglufjordur region in 2014, staying at Dalvik, and we stopped in Hedinsfjordur, as it is such a narrow valley between two road tunnels.I also enjoyed references to snow buntings (although we never saw flocks in July) and pancakes, with jam and cream. The fact that it is usually rhubarb jam that is provided, which I found surprising until I though about what would grow during the short Icelandic summers, is omitted!
    • 5/5
      I love how Ragnar Jónasson puts a story together. Perhaps it has something to do with those fourteen Agatha Christie novels he translated into Icelandic, but I think it has even more to do with his natural talent as a writer. The characters in this Dark Iceland series are moving right along. Ari Thór and his lady love Kristín seem to be growing up, but that is going to be tested in the future due to the actions of Ari Thór's superior officer. Speaking of superiors, Ísrún still has someone in the newsroom who would love to force her to quit, but she's having an easier time of it because she's learned a few tricks in how to deal with the situation.Both mysteries-- the one in northern Iceland and the one in Reykjavik-- are strong stories. Ari Thór's is more deeply rooted in the past and is hampered by the fact that many of the people concerned are dead. Even more maddening are the people who want the past to remain in the past. For me, the mystery in Reykjavik affected me more. Emil's and Róbert's lives both changed when Emil's partner was attacked and left for dead. Two years later, the young woman finally dies. Emil's life is completely shattered while Róbert's has taken a dramatic turn for the better. As their story unfolds, Jónasson has us feel empathy for both men-- something that's not easy to do-- and the book is the stronger for it. After all, life is seldom simple.As always, the weather and landscape of Iceland play a part in Rupture. Few authors are as talented as Jónasson in creating atmosphere. Combine that with strong, believable characters and a multi-layered story filled with unanswered questions and deep emotions, and you've got another winner from someone who has quickly become one of my favorite writers. I cannot recommend his books highly enough.
    • 5/5
      Intrigue stalks!All seems tangential and disconnected but as the threads are teased out in Rupture small strands lead to larger surmises.Isolated incidents seem just that:A long dead woman, presumably a suicide, living by a remote fjord of Hedinsfjorour.A photo surfacing showing an unknown youth with the dead woman and the others living thereA hit and run accidentA kidnapped childWhat might they or might they not have in common?Ari Thór has time on his hands when Siglufjorour is quarantined due to a deadly virus outbreak. A request to look into a 1955 suicide gives Ari something to do, an investigation that catches his interest and his imagination.Reporter Ísrún from Reykjavik is juggling the thought of a serious illness, her parents separation and now three newsworthy items drop into her Investigative journalist's lap.When Ari and Ísrún connect to pursue their threads, things become interesting.Rupture, a fitting title as lives are indeed ruptured when facts and conjecture unfold, reminding us of the old adage of "six degrees of separation".Chronologically taking place before Nightblind, Rupture fills in the gaps of Ari and Kristin's relationship.Again a brooding, atmospheric piece of writing from Jonasson. A St. Martins Press ARC via NetGalley
    • 3/5
      I've given the other books I this series four stars, but this barely garnered a three. Why? Yes, I still love the atmosphere, the darkness, the coldness, so pervasive. Such an enclosing air. Yes, I also still like Ari Thor, though I this one he shares star billing with Isrun, a journalist who has her own issues. My problem was with the many different stories, threads, happening at the same time, made it hard to concentrate on any one. Broke up the narrative with the constant changing of focus. There were also a few subplots that were resolved with nary a blink. One, the quarantine, I couldn't even feel like it was a necessary inclusion, it served imo, little purpose. I did like the past story that was being looked into, and that brought my rating up to a three. Mostly though, I felt this was too rushed and too many items were put into the pot. Didn't stir up well.
    • 5/5
      "Rupture," by Ragnar Jónasson, translated capably from the Icelandic by Quentin Bates, has a multi-faceted plot. The author follows the fortunes of Róbert who, although he is living happily with his girlfriend, Sunna, is plagued by terrifying nightmares. In addition, Hédinn is a fifty-four-year-old man who has unanswered questions about events that occurred more than half a century earlier, around the time of his birth. He asks Ari Thór Arason, a police officer based in Siglufjörour, to find out what led to the tragic death of a member of Hédinn's family. Because there is a quarantine in force thanks to an infectious disease that has taken several lives, Ari Thór's schedule is light, and he agrees to help Hédinn.

      Two additional inquiries involve a hit and run and the abduction of a small child. Ari Thór is assisted by Ísrún, a talented television news reporter based in Reykavík. She is a responsible journalist but can be relentless when she gets wind of a juicy story. Ísrún's hard work and Ari Thór's tireless digging eventually bear fruit. In Jónasson's unforgiving world, transgressions have a way of coming come back to haunt people who believe that they have escaped justice. Initially, we are faced with so many narrative threads that it difficult to keep them straight in our minds. Gradually, however, patterns emerge, and we begin to realize that seemingly unrelated incidents are somehow connected.

      Reading the books in this series out of order (for some reason, they are not released chronologically) can be bewildering, but it is possible to enjoy this novel as a stand-alone. Ísrún, whom we have seen before, is a bright and ambitious professional who has a serious problem that she tries to ignore but, if it worsens, could derail her career. Ari Thór can be impulsive and volatile at times, but he is on his best behavior here, with one glaring exception. He proudly reveals a theory to Hédinn that throws the poor man for a loop. Is it ethical to inflict an emotional wound on a blameless individual that might haunt him for the rest of his life? "Rupture" is a fitting title that can apply to fractured relationships; frayed moral values; and the cracks that appear in a person, family, or society because of actions fueled by greed, a thirst for power, arrogance, and the failure to shoulder responsibility for one's misdeeds. This is a suspenseful, splendidly descriptive, atmospheric, and evocative work of fiction by a consummate storyteller. Ragnar Jónasson proves once again that he is a master of Icelandic noir.
    • 3/5
      I did not care for this at all. I liked others in the series but this one was disappointing.
    • 5/5
      I neglected this series a bit, but it couldn't be more fitting in the current CoVid 19 era.Ari and everyone in his village are in quarantine because of an Ebola case. Therefore, it is a little quieter at the police station and Ari can deal with an old case. An inhabitant came by with an old photograph, whereupon his parents, his mother's sister and a teenager can be seen. But he has no idea who this teenager is. Ari begins to 'dig'. With the help of a journalist, the pastor and an old midwife, they come closer and closer to the history of this family.The journalist also researches a case of child abduction.It is written again very exciting and Ari is becoming more and more settled in this village.
    • 4/5
      4.5 starsAnother gorgeous cover, another great read. A couple of years ago, I was browsing in the bookstore at Keflavik airport when “Snowblind” from Orenda Books caught my eye (and wallet). I hadn’t heard of it, the author or the publisher. How times have changed.Most of the series is now translated so I recently spent a few days back in Iceland (from my sofa) by binge reading the next 3 instalments. This is book #4 & I think it just might be my favourite. Ari Thór is having trouble finding something to do. After a tourist died from a highly infectious bug, Siglufjördur was put under quarantine. No one is allowed in or out & the streets are empty as residents hunker down inside. So it’s the perfect time to dig into an old mystery. Ari is contacted by an elderly gent named Hédinn with a photo that recently came into his possession. It was taken on an isolated farm where the man was born. In 1955, 2 couples from Reykjavik moved to the remote area. Less than 2 years later, one was dead & the others fled back to the city with a newborn in tow. Hédinn wants to know if Ari can find the answer to one question: who is the stranger in the photo?Ari soon finds connections In Reykjavik but can’t travel due to the quarantine. He enlists the help of Isrún, a reporter he met on a previous case. She agrees if he’ll give her the scoop on the situation in Siglufjördur which is gaining national attention. There are several additional side stories that develop as the book progresses. The fun part is watching as the characters pick away at their investigations & uncover a few surprising twists along the way.If you’ve read any of these books, you know you’re in for intricate mysteries & great characters you become attached to. Their personal stories continue to develop & Ari in particular is a young man still struggling to finding his feet (if you’re keeping score, he & Kristin are back together). He’s more accepted by the town’s residents but will always be an outsider & his feelings of isolation are perfectly mirrored by the stark setting. The quarantine serves to heighten the claustrophobic atmosphere as Siglufjördur becomes a ghost town. The silence, chill winds, & looming mountains provide a backdrop for the rising tension as Ari gradually discovers what happened to Hédinn’s family . There are no car chases or shoot-outs here, just a smart, character driven mystery that gives your brain a workout. It’s one of those books that leaves you a bit disoriented when you eventually look up & find yourself on the sofa, reaching for a sweater. Well, the binge-fest is over. I’m left waiting for “Whiteout” & plotting a return trip to Iceland that just might include dropping by a certain town up north.