‘It’s a therapeutic genre for me’: Iceland’s PM releases debut crime novel

Katrin Jakobsdottir joins long list of fiction-writing politicians with book that came together during Covid pandemic

For 30 years, the disappearance of teenager Lara Marteinsdottir from the windswept island of Viey, off the coast of Iceland's capital, tormented the nation. Until 1986, when Valur, a rookie reporter on a local newspaper, decided to investigate ...

So far, so Nordic noir. But Reykjavik, published to promising reviews in Iceland this week, is a crime novel with a difference - it was written by the prime minister, albeit with the help of one of the country's international bestselling authors.