Thanks to Minotaur Books and NetGalley for allowing me to read and review this book.

Since I enjoy Scandinavian mysteries and the books by Yrsa Sigurdardottir, I was excited to be able to read this book. This is a second book in a series, but that does not keep one from being engaged in the story, as enough background material is provided. When two investigations seem to point to a single act of violence from the past, the police seek outside help to try and understand who could be commiting these new crimes. As more people are murdered in gruesome ways, the investigation team becomes more desperate to solve the mystery.

Even though the characters seem to have the same characteristics as others from this genre, they are engaging and the plot twists in this story keeps the reader guessing as to who is committing the crimes.

Another solid Scandinoir by Icelandic author Yrsa Sigurdardottir. This book is pitch perfect in atmosphere and sense of dread of never quite knowing where the murderer will turn up next. Looking forward to the rest of the series.

Exciting, dark and chilling. I can’t wait to read more in the series, such a great series starter.

Tracing the crimes committed by an aparent psychopat targetting women without any aparent connection between each other, the thriller is more than a simple criminalistic investigation. It has that pinch of life which connects the crime story with the outside context of the society, and the more or less observations about the limited social contacts between neighbours and even between people belonging to the same families make it an interesting sociological evaluation in itself.

It is a very intense reading, where the psychopatic elaboration of the crimes intercedes with the mystery of an adoption mentioned at the beginning of the book and the question if there is any connection between those crimes and what the reader will easily guess as a terrible - blood soaked - secret.

There are many characters in this book, with more or less forefront role in the story, and the author succeeds to connect them in so many various ways that it almost looks like a puppet theatre very well coordinated. Most of the main characters, especially the children ones, are hard to forget and at least a couple of days after finishing the book I had them in my mind, as much as you can have a complex human being from the real life, thinking about the motivation or their psychological depth.

At the end of the story, each and every one piece of the domino is falling down to its place. And what and ending this story has! Completely unexpected and exactly how I like my thriller stories: unexpected, outrageously surprising and impossible to predict.

In Iceland, a mother is gruesomely murdered in a bizarre way with a household item. Her young daughter, Margret, is the only witness to the crime. Freyja is the director and psychologist at the Children's House which deals with young, traumatized and abused children. They are asked to facilitate with the police to protect Margret. Detective Hulder is newly promoted and is not sure if he is able to lead the investigation. He also has a personal history with Freyja. Another murder occurs, this time a retired schoolteacher. The killer leaves clues including odd notes and coded messages on the shortwave radio. Karl, a university student with few friends, may hold the key. Can Hulder and his team figure out the killer's motives and stop the killings? This was a thrilling read and the first book in a new series by the author.

I received an eARC via Netgalley and St. Martin's Press with no requirements for a review. I voluntarily read this book and provided this review.

Really interesting first book. I feel like it's created a world and set of characters I'd definitely keep reading in follow-ups!

Another winner fromYrsa.. Nicely plotted and a great ending. Don't miss any of these books by this author.
Very satisfying.

Thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book. I enjoyed the Thora series, but the characters in this story confused me initially. I probably will not continue this series, but this is still worthwhile.

To celebrate the paperback launch of this amazing book I'm really pleased to be launching the blog tour for The Legacy today.

It is always good to discover that there is a new book from Yrsa Sigurdardottir and it’s even better when you realise that it is the first in a new series. The Children’s House works with traumatised young people advising the police on how best to question and approach them as well as trying to heal the damage that they have suffered.

Freyja is called in to assist with a very young girl who witnessed her mother’s brutal murder and who may hold vital clues for the police. Huldar has been newly promoted and is leading the investigation into the grisly murder but he has already stirred things up with his colleagues and with his previous dealings with Freyja. She doesn’t trust the police anyway and that mistrust is well deserved with the young detective.

A complex story begins to unravel in mid-winter Reykjavik with a group of marijuana smoking students obsessed with CB radio and some bizarre coded messages coming through that appear to link in to strange notes being left by the killer. As further victims are found it becomes critical to stop this man and to protect little Margret who may be the next target when the killer realises she is still alive.

As with all Yrsa’s books The Legacy paints a fascinating picture of modern day Iceland and has a fantastic twist that I defy anyone to pick up on. I was convinced I knew who the black man was and I was completely wrong! Hopefully we’ll see more of Huldar and Freyja very soon.

<strong>[UPDATE: Book 2 in this series "The Reckoning" is currently scheduled for 3rd May. Can't wait!]</strong>

Supplied by Net Galley and Hodder & Stoughton in exchange for an honest review.

UK Publication date: <strong>Paperback: Jan 25 2018.</strong> Hardback Mar 23 2017. 464 pages.

Sorry, l couldn't download this. My amazon account has been hacked, can't access my kindle. Trying to fix and download via others means, but l'm still trying to work it out. Thank you so much for the opportunity and l apologise for technical difficulties!

First of all, I love Scandinavian crime novels and this one was fantastic! Set in Iceland, the book centers around a seemingly-random murder of a mother while her 7-year-old daughter hides underneath the bed. When the detective and child psychologist team up to question the girl and solve the murder, many truths are unearthed--both personally and professionally. Other characters come into play and there's a code/riddle the murderer leaves that must be solved to identify the killer. This was quite the page-turner as I had no clue up until the very end. Fast pacing, great dialogue, many twists, flawed characters, and edge-of-your-seat suspense made a winning combination. I can't wait for the next book in this series! Trigger warnings for brutality.

The Legacy is the start of a new series by this Icelandic author. The protagonists are a detective and psychologist. The crime is rooted in decisions that were made in the past regarding the welfare of children. This book was too dark for me but, if you can take bleakness and grit, maybe this one is for you.

Is is always cold and snowing in Scandinavian crime fiction? If it is, that's ok with me because the atmosphere in Sigurdardottir's newly translated Icelandic crime novel The Legacy is perfect for the characters and their intentions.

In a political move by the department, newly-promoted detective Hulder is given the lead on a grisly and unique murder with the only witness being the victim's young daughter. Hulder is forced to work with a past acquaintance, child-psychologist Freyja, to determine what the child saw. As the team of investigators works to uncover the evidence, Sigurdardottir does an excellent job describing the frustration of trying to track down several dead ends, while still doling out clues to pique the reader's curiosity. I appreciate that each character is flawed and believable. By the end of the book, I could see each individual clearly. The tension rises as the murderer turns on several others on the way to the impressive conclusion.

The only thing that keeps this from a 5-star review is a couple haphazard coincidences that sometimes plagues the plot. I know that Iceland is small, but I don't think it is that small.

Like so many fans of this genre, I have read books by the well-known authors Nesbo, Larsson, and Adler-Olsen. This was my first by Sigurdardottir and I believe she's a great author to turn to for those wanting to branch out. I'd love to continue this series as the translations are released.

Thank you to Minotaur Books, Net Galley, and the author for providing a copy for my review.

The title of the book actually gives it away when you finally find the killer. At first it was a bit confusing knowing what happened, but then as the story progresses it starts to make sense. Each action that takes place makes total sense to me, however, I would argue with Yrsa that the killer would have escaped if he hadn't been put through the ringer by Huldar and then taken down by Freyja. It was very kind of Yrsa to have Karl listening to Arnar and then to Margret to give a recap of what actually happened. As always it ended quite noir. I would suggest to my readers to read this book because of it being noir.

If you either enjoy Nordic Noir or are looking for a fresh take on crime writing and weary of the same-old, same-old, consider The Legacy, the first in the Childrens House series by Yrsa Sigurdardottir.

First, a primer on Iceland for everyone not a resident of that country.
Iceland has an estimated population of 300,000 and one of the lowest crime rates in the world.

Take a glance at the following UN data of 2009 homicides:
 Brazil 43,909
 Denmark 47
 UK 724
 US 15,241
 Iceland 1

That’s right. One. If you think that’s stunning, consider that in 2008 there were zero.

Moreover, although there are approximately 90,000 guns in Iceland (for those 300,000 people), crimes in Iceland usually don’t involve firearms. Also, there is virtually no economic disparity or class tension. 97% of Icelanders identify themselves as middle-class. One might well pity the writer who opts to write crime novels that take place in Iceland.

Enter Yrsa Sigurdardottir, perhaps best known for her series in which the central character is Thóra Gudmundsdóttir. Civil engineer by day. Crime/detective/suspense writer by night.

“[M]y job as an engineer gives me a particular perspective on the human experience and the way I depict it. Engineers confront the world through technology, numbers, energy, strength, budgets, and progress; they engage in meetings, face the pressure of schedules and deadlines, and so on. Other writers with different training will have insight into layers of the community that I am less interested in. My Iceland is thus different from that of Arnaldur Indriðason’s; his viewpoint is that of a man, mine a woman’s if nothing else. I do not often address the lower levels of society and by that I mean the so-called underworld of criminals. My murderers are regular people—something that I find more challenging, motivating, and credible. The local underworld here is not capable of interesting murderers; when these occur they are always committed under the influence and are mainly pathetically sad.

Instead of drug-dealing and petty crimes, I prefer that the interaction between my characters leading up to ill deeds takes into account the closeness of people here. Where six degrees of separation applies to most of the world’s inhabitants, in Iceland it is probably only one degree of separation. Or zero. This provides a great tool for crime and thriller writing as my plots tend to revolve around the minor and major clashes between people. What better than to have everyone know, or know of, everyone else? How hard would you fight to keep your ugliest secrets secret under such circumstances?"


Why focus on the author in my review? Because, on its face, there’s nothing obviously special about the plot of The Legacy. What makes The Legacy a great novel and successful crime/suspense read is the way Sigurdardottir tells her story and her skill in telling it, which reflects the excerpted interview above.

In 1987, something horrific happens and, as a result, and three children are adopted by three different families. Flash forward to 2015 and a doctor’s spouse and mother of 3 is murdered in her own Reykavik home. Unbeknownst to the killer, the young daughter, Margret, is under the bed during the murder and becomes a crucial witness for the police. The doctor/husband is out of town on business, and Margret is whisked to the Childrens House, for appropriate counseling and care. The director of the Childrens House is Frejya.

Detective Huldar, a nicotine-chewing, single, smart but inexperienced, junior detective, leads the investigation. Huldar recently met and gave a fake name to Frejya at a bar one evening, then snuck away from her apartment the following a.m. without a note, text or goodbye. This background makes for some additional tension throughout the novel, from the moment of Margret’s initial interview about her observations on the night of the murder. Other related murders occur. There’s a code none of the detectives can crack and no resources available to them to crack it.

It’s soon apparent that the downside of having so few murders occur that a department lacks the resources or expertise to solve the ones that do. But then. Sigurdardottir creates a police department under stress, where the various players act authentically. Margret acts and communicates in an age-appropriate manner. Frejya’s back story – a brother in jail and her house-sitting both his apartment and his dog, Molly, in a sketchy area of town – makes sense. The code is delivered by radio to a trio of down-on-their luck twenty-year old guys, one of whom, Karl, is particularly well-written and sympathetic. His friends act like twenty-year old guys, not props to flesh out the quantity of possible suspects. I didn’t identify the killer until the same moment Huldar identified [insert ambiguous pronoun here], which is a sign of success with any crime novel.

Note that, while the gore is minimal, the killing scenes are so effectively written that they place the reader in the head of each victim, with full knowledge that escape is impossible. Chilling is an understatement. It’s the opposite of torture-porn, but … still.. you may well want to skip ahead a few pages if you don’t want to have those scenes embedded in your brain for some time. The suspense was palpable from the first moment Karl heard a sound in his basement and it remained unexplained. Odds are you’ll stay up too late to read it, as I did.

As an aside, props to the publisher for inserting, upfront, a character and pronunciation list. Given the crowded cast of characters and my desire to learn Icelandic pronunciations, I found this list especially helpful.

Thanks to St. Martin’s Press and Net Galley for providing an e-copy for my review.

Note: The second book in the series, The Reckoning, is scheduled to be released on March 22, 2018; and here’s a link to a 2015 interview with Sigurdardottir.
http://scancan.net/sigurthardottir_1_...