dead sweet: volume 1

When a celebrated government official is found dead after his surprise birthday party, a young police officer uncovers a terrifying world of financial crime, sinister cults and disturbing secret lives. Icelandic politician Katrín Júlíusdóttir’s award-winning debut - first in a breathtaking series...

**Winner of the Blackbird Award for Best Icelandic Crime Debut**

A breathtaking political thriller from one of Iceland’s most exciting new voices Eva Björg gisdóttir

Katrín Júlíusdóttir skilfully weaves together intense family dynamics, dark pasts and criminal endeavours in this masterful narrative Lilja Sigurðardóttir

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A murder is just the beginning...

When Óttar Karlsson, a wealthy and respected government official and businessman, is found murdered, after failing to turn up at his own surprise birthday party, the police are at a loss. It isn’t until young police officer Sigurdís finds a well-hidden safe in his impersonal luxury apartment that clues start emerging.

As Óttar’s shady business dealings become clear, a second, unexpected line of enquiry emerges, when Sigurdís finds a US phone number in the safe, along with papers showing regular money transfers to an American account. Following the trail to Minnesota, trauma rooted in Sigurdís’s own childhood threatens to resurface and the investigation strikes chillingly close to home...

Atmospheric, deeply unsettling and full of breakneck twists and turns, Dead Sweet is a startling debut thriller that uncovers a terrifying world of financial crime, sinister cults and disturbing secret lives, and kicks off an addictive, mind-blowing new series.

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Exceptional and realistic characters ... Dead Sweet hooks you in from the very first page and keeps you there until the unexpected ending Blackbird Award judges: Yrsa Sigurðardóttir, Ragnar Jónasson and Bjarni orsteinsson

An excellent debut thriller with a highly original storyline S unn Gísladóttir, The Reading Room

What readers are saying...

*****

Dark, chilling and twisty ... I couldn’t put it down

Breathtakingly unnerving

What an ending!’

So atmospheric, so clever

Sigurdís is a brilliant character

’The tension is almost unbearable ... I loved it!

Katrín received the Blackbird Award, an Icelandic crime-writing prize, for her first novel, Dead Sweet. Her debut novel was reviewed well by critics and hit the best-selling lists in the first weeks after publication. Katrín has a political background and was a member of Parliament from 2003 until 2016. Before she was elected to Parliament, Katrín was an advisor and project manager at a tech company and a senior buyer and CEO in the retail sector, as well as the Managing Director of a student union during her uni years.

Quentin Bates escaped English suburbia as a teenager, jumping at the chance of a gap year working in Iceland. He is the author of a series of crime novels set in present-day Iceland (Frozen Out, Cold Steal, Chilled to the Bone, Winterlude, Cold Comfort and Thin Ice which have been published worldwide. He has translated all of Ragnar Jónasson’s Dark Iceland series.