friends Coburn, Baumann, Shore and Vigil are once again embarking on their yearly elk hunting expedition to the aptly named and snowbound Mt Isolation. They are forced to seek refuge when Vigil suffers severe trauma and injury in a fall and are now along surrounded by the harsh elements of nature and something evil and unknown....the scene is set! “Someone or something was still out there. Watching them. Waiting”... A horror story (to appreciate the full effects!) is best enjoyed alone and possibly with the aid of an alcoholic beverage as the silence and tension can be unbearable. I sometimes read very early in the morning and approaching winter, here in the UK, the wind may be howling accompanied by a little rain....and then I read the following.... Christie would go on to have the most influence on the budding author as he started reading her novels aged twelve. As a child he read her novels first in Icelandic before he transitioned into English and went on to become a translator. It is Agatha Christie’s strengths in setting and plotting that had some of the most profound influence on Ragnar Jonasson. Starred Review. Jónasson skillfully alternates points of view and shifts of time that set in relief Ari Thór's efforts to find a purpose to his lonely life. The action builds to a shattering climax." - Publishers Weekly A blend of Agatha Christie's classic crime stories and Arnaldur Indridason's Icelandic thrillers, ... Perfectly capturing the pressures of rural life and the freezing, deadly Icelandic winter, Snowblind will keep readers on the edge of their seats--preferably snuggled beneath a warm blanket. - Shelf Awareness

At the age of 24, Ari Thor Arason finds himself recruited, as a young policeman into a town where his boss, the chief, (Tomas) tells him "nothing ever happens."If the rest of the Dark Iceland series is as accomplished as Snowblind, Ragnar Jónasson’s name is poised to become as common place as that of Stieg Larsson’s.’ Bolo Books If I were writing a story that involved cocaine smuggling in the 1970s, this book would be the perfect textbook: it's that detailed. How to design a smuggling operation, how to scale and implement it, how to weigh, evaluate, cut and resell cocaine, it is all covered in this book. I have definitely found a new favorite Author and series. In the vein of Agatha Christie, which this Author has translated 14 works into Icelandic for comes tales of mystery and murder set in the most unlikely of places, Siglufordur, an isolated fishing village on the Northern coast of Iceland. Yes, I read this during the heat of summer. If I’d read this during our horrendous and never-ending winter I most likely would’ve moved to one of those sunshiny states. This book gets points for its descriptions of an icy cold hell but, most to my dismay because I was truly looking forward to it, it never moved above a 3 star read for me. I’ll try to tell you why.

ESCHBORNER STADTMAGAZIN / “A wonderful work to get to know the guest country of the bookfair, Iceland.” – Eschborner Stadtmagazin on SNOWBLIND Selected as one of the debuts of the year (Crime Fiction Lover) and one of the books of the year by Bolo Books, Off the Shelf Books, Reading Room with a View, Crime Thriller Girl, Steph's Book Blog and, Grab This Book, and as one of the series of the year by Bibliophile Book Club. We are on the threshold of human interchange here, speech, verbal commerce along the barren avenues of Quaalude City. Communication at this level, although sophisticated in its own way, can best be described as haphazard. It is a kind of space-age remodeling of traditional counterintelligence techniques - scrambled messages, predistorted transmissions, sympathetically programmed transceivers - a kind of mojo cryptography which contains no universal cipher and is efficient only when two people are doing the same kind of dope."I'm tempted to say Snowblind is a traditional ghost story but it isn't really. The ghosts are fairly traditional but the situation and the event that creates them is a little different. It's different enough to put some real life in these ghosts (pun is definitely intentional) and epic enough for Christopher Golden to flesh out its cast of pretty much everyone in the small town of Coventry. It is a quieter type of supernatural horror novel with an emphasis on the psychological rather than blood and gore. Yet it has more than its share of action and surprises. Sweeping Nordic landscapes, snowstorm-induced claustrophobia, and a cast of characters reminiscent of Agatha Christie: Ragnar Jónasson's debut mystery meets all my requirements for a moody, engrossing Nordic Nordic noir read. I have been waiting to read Ragnar's Dark Iceland series for ages now, and my first foray into this rising star's works exceeded my expectations, and as a bonus, now has me itching to visit Iceland and explore Siglufjordur! Thanks to Ragnar for sending me so many gorgeous pictures of his hometown—I hope you'll enjoy the photos interspersed throughout this review! Twelve years later the residents of Coventry have never fully recovered- feelings of guilt and loss still weigh heavily on the ones left behind. When the weather forecast calls for another super-storm- people become nervous and edgy, and when the snow starts falling- it becomes apparent that something evil came along with it....again. A classic crime story seen through a uniquely Icelandic lens ... first rate and highly recommended." - Lee Child

Snowblind – a masterclass in scene setting and subtle tension building ... Where Agatha Christie created a murder mystery with a small suspect pool on a fast moving train or within a large country house, Ragnar Jónasson creates the same feel in a whole town’ Grab This Book WDR 5 - SCALA / „Bloody yet quiet portrait of a snowed-in Icelandic sea village, homely and gloomy at the same time.“ – Ingrid Müller-Münch, WDR 5 Scala, 22.11.2011 on SNOWBLIND The writing is crisp and economical, the gore is nicely realized, and the atmosphere is frighteningly realized. There's a dictum in writing that demands "show, don't just tell," and, in regards to the primary threat of Snowblind, McBride nails that here. Neither the readers nor the protagonists know quite what they're up against until fairly late in the book, which makes it all the scarier. We're in this together with these four friends, lost in the woods after a hunting mishap and finding refuge in an old, abandoned cabin, forced to fill in the blanks of what, exactly, is out there. McBride gives us a few hints before the big unveiling, which is a neat little twist. The lead character of the Dark Iceland series is Ari Thor, a twenty-something year old rookie detective that has just been posted to the town of Siglufjörour. Siglufjörour is a small town on the mountains near the Arctic Circle where everyone knows everyone. Isolated and only accessible through a dark tunnel bored into the mountain, it makes for a great setting for noir crime novel series. FRÉTTABLAÐIÐ, ICELAND / “A well constructed, well stylized and exciting mystery with good characterization and a solution which is a complete surprise to the reader.” - Friðrika Benónýsdóttir, Fréttablaðið newspaper review on SNOWBLIND

Publication Order of Anthologies

The small New England town of Coventry had weathered a thousand blizzards…but never one like this. Icy figures danced in the wind and gazed through children’s windows with soul-chilling eyes. People wandered into the whiteout and were never seen again. Families were torn apart, and the town would never be the same. has all the skilful plotting of an old-fashioned whodunnit although it feels bitingly contemporary in setting and tone’ - SUNDAY EXPRESS In Christopher Golden’s first horror novel in more than a decade--a work reminiscent of early Stephen King-- Snowblind updates the ghost story for the modern age.

Snowblind is one of the most beautifully written crime novels I have ever come across …’ ***** Liz Loves BooksThis is subtle..Christopher Golden proves here that the best creepy stories do not need out and out gore blood and guts, the best ones are the ones where its the atmosphere that gets you, and where the characters are realistic people that you can root for even as unrealistic things are happening to them. It did genuinely make me shiver now and then (creepy, misbehaving children will do that to me every time!) and it is an imaginative and disturbing tale. Jónasson spins an involving tale of small-town police work that vividly captures the snowy setting that so affects the rookie cop. Iceland noir at its moodiest" -Booklist