Cold comfort

Starring a female police detective and set in Iceland, "this procedural series [is] a standout" (Kirkus Reviews).

Officer Gunnhildur Gísladóttir, recently promoted from her post in rural Iceland to Reykjavík's Serious Crime Unit, is tasked with hunting down escaped convict Long Ommi, who has embarked on a spree of violent score-settling in and around the city. Meanwhile, Gunna is also investigating the murder of a fitness guru in her own city-center apartment.

As the officer delves into the cases, she unearths some unwelcome secrets and influential friends shared by both guru and convict. In an Iceland plagued by an ongoing financial crisis, Gunna has to take stock of the whirlwind changes that have swept through the country-and the fact that at the highest levels of power, the system's endemic corruption leads, inevitably, to murder in this "twisty, complex, and dark" work of crime fiction (Booklist).