Fresh from maternity leave, Detective Elma finds herself confronted with a complex case, when a man is found murdered in a holiday cottage in the depths of the Icelandic countryside – the victim of a frenzied knife attack, with a shocking message scrawled on the wall above him.

At home with their baby daughter, Sævar is finding it hard to let go of work, until the chance discovery in a discarded box provides him with a distraction. Could the diary of a young boy, detailing the events of a long-ago summer have a bearing on Elma’s case?

#BoysWhoHurt @evaaegisdottir @OrendaBooks @victoriacribb #RandomThingsTours 
@annecater @RandomTTours #blogtour #IcelandNoir #NordicNoir

Once again, the team at West Iceland CID have to contend with local secrets in the small town of Akranes, where someone has a vested interest in preventing the truth from coming to light. And Sævar has secrets of his own that threaten to destroy his and Elma’s newfound happiness.

Tense, twisty and shocking, Boys Who Hurt is the next, addictive instalment in the award-winning Forbidden Iceland series, as dark events from the past endanger everything…

My Review

When I read The Creak On The Stairs, the first book in the Forbidden Iceland series, I said the following: ‘Everything about it is exciting, chilling, scary, I could go on with a list of adjectives. It’s the perfect police procedural but there is also so much more.’

Well, Boys Who Hurt is even more exciting, more chilling and more scary. We are back with police officer Elma, now living with Sævar and their seven-month-old baby Adda, in her childhood home town of Akranes. Her boss is still Hörður, whose wife died almost a year before, and he is devastated.

The plot is complicated, and at first we don’t see any link between the current gruesome knife attack, and the death of a teenager at a summer camp in 1995. Except for the writing on the victims’s wall (Take away my crimes and sins with blood, O Jesus), the mystery surrounding the boy’s ‘accidental drowning’, and the fact that the victims (yes there are more to come) were all present at the time, sharing room number four with the dead boy.

At times Boys Who Hurt is very dark, with not only murders, but also child abuse, bullying, rape, missing women, and quite a few truly horrible people, especially Hafdís, wife of Matthias, both of whom were at the summer camp in 1995, along with Thorgeir. Ottó is Hörður’s predecessor and Matthias’s father, who would make you want to quit the force if he was your boss.

There are quite a few theories as you read along, mostly red herrings. I only guessed one of them, which was fairly near the end. Boys Who Hurt is so good and so clever, I nearly missed my yoga class reading the last few chapters. When I say I couldn’t put it down, I really mean it.

Many thanks to @annecater for inviting me to be part of #RandomThingsTours

About the Author

Born in Akranes in 1988, Eva Björg Ægisdóttir studied for an MSc in globalisation in Norway before returning to Iceland to write her first novel. Her debut thriller The Creak on the Stairs, was published in 2018, and won the Blackbird Award in Iceland. Published in English by Orenda Books in 2020, it became a digital number-one bestseller worldwide, was shortlisted for the Capital Crime/Amazon Publishing Awards in two categories and won the CWA John Creasey Dagger in 2021. Girls Who Lie, the second book in the Forbidden Iceland series was shortlisted for the Petrona Award and the CWA Crime in Translation Dagger, and Night Shadows followed suit. In 2024, she won the Blood Drop Award for Crime Book of the Year in Iceland. With over 260,000 copies sold in English alone, Eva has become one of Iceland’s – and crime-fiction’s – most highly regarded authors. She lives in Reykjavik with her husband and three children. Follow her on @evaaegisdottir

About Orenda Books

Orenda Books is a small independent publishing company specialising in literary fiction with a heavy emphasis on crime/thrillers, and approximately half the list in translation. They’ve been twice shortlisted for the Nick Robinson Best Newcomer Award at the IPG awards, and publisher and owner Karen Sullivan was a Bookseller Rising Star in 2016. In 2018, they were awarded a prestigious Creative Europe grant for their translated books programme. Three authors, including Agnes Ravatn, Matt Wesolowski and Amanda Jennings have been WHSmith Fresh Talent picks, and Ravatn’s The Bird Tribunal was shortlisted for the Dublin Literary Award, won an English PEN Translation Award, and adapted for BBC Radio Four ’s Book at Bedtime. Six titles have been short- or long-listed for the CWA Daggers. Launched in 2014 with a mission to bring more international literature to the UK market, Orenda Books publishes a host of debuts, many of which have gone on to sell millions worldwide, and looks for fresh, exciting new voices that push the genre in new directions. Bestselling authors include Ragnar Jonasson, Antti Tuomainen, Gunnar Staalesen, Michael J. Malone, Kjell Ola Dahl, Louise Beech, Johana Gustawsson, Lilja Sigurðardóttir and Sarah Stovell.