When the remains of a young woman and a baby are uncovered on a derelict farm, Detective Elma is drawn into a disturbing investigation, as a young mother settling in Akranes realises danger may be closer than she ever expected… The multi-award-winning, international bestselling Forbidden Iceland series continues…
`She uses complex plots to explore how monsters are made and demonstrate that “evil can lurk behind the most attractive of smiles”. Her many characters are people not puppets and she delights in pulling the rug from under their –and our – feet. If you have never read Aegisdottir, now is the time to start´ Mark Sanderson, The Times
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When the skeletons of a young woman and a baby are uncovered on a long-abandoned farm in Hvalfjörður, it is clear they were buried years apart. West Iceland CID begins to investigate the disturbing discovery, aware that someone has gone to great lengths to keep the past hidden.
In Akranes, Karitas, a young single mother seeking a new start, settles in with her four-year-old son and rents a basement flat from an eccentric landlord. A cautious sense of happiness returns when she meets the boy next door.
But when news breaks that a local girl has been murdered, Karitas must decide who she can trust, knowing that one wrong choice could place her and her child in danger. Detective Elma is drawn into the case, forced to navigate long-hidden family secrets to understand a killer’s motive, while trying to hold together her increasingly troubled relationship with Sævar.
Dark, atmospheric and rich with psychological suspense, The Last Tenant confirms Eva Björg Ægisdóttir as one of Iceland’s finest crime writers, as a meticulous investigation and a series of unsettling discoveries draw a close-knit community towards a reckoning no one can escape…
My Review
I think of all the books I’ve read by this author – six including The Last Tenant – this is my favourite (just overtaking The Creak On The Stairs). I’m not sure why, maybe it’s just the idea of the unknown woman and the baby buried where no-one would find them – till now. It was very sad, even more so when we discover who they are.
Single mother Karitas and her four-year old son Bessi have just moved to Akranes and taken a basement flat in the home of a strange elderly man called Baldvin. She finds him unnerving and creepy, but her son seems to really like him. He tells her that she is one of three ‘suns’ in his life, one of which is his daughter. It’s in their names.
Soon Karitas meets a young man called Kristófer, with whom she tentatively begins a ‘relationship’. He lives next door with his father Hermann and young wife Rós. Hermann owns a pharmacy where Rós also works and they are pretty well off.
In the meantime Detective Elma has been in a relationship with one of her colleagues Sævar, and they are still together, now with a toddler in tow. Her boss Hörður is still on the scene, though he doesn’t figure that much in this latest story. Elma is investigating the discovery of the bodies, as well as the disappearance six years ago of a young woman named Sólrún, believed to have taken her own life.
This was a fantastic book with so many nasty and suspicious characters going back to the 1960s and 1970s, and linked to the abandoned farm in Hvalfjörður where the bodies were found. And just when you think you’ve solved the mystery, everything changes and you have to start again. So cleverly plotted, I just adored it. More from this author please.
Many thanks to @annecater for inviting me to be part of #TheLastTenant #blogtour
About the Author
Born in Akranes, Eva Björg Ægisdóttir studied for an MSc in Globalisation in Norway before returning to Iceland and deciding to write a novel. Her debut, The Creak on the Stairs, was published in 2018, becoming a bestseller in Iceland and going on to win the Blackbird Award and the Storytel Award for Best Crime Novel of the Year. It was published in English by Orenda Books in 2020, and became a number-one bestseller in ebook, shortlisting for Capital Crime’s Amazon Publishing Awards in two categories, and winning the CWA John Creasey New Blood Dagger. Girls Who Lie, Night Shadows, You Can’t See Me and Boys Who Hurt soon followed suit, shortlisting for the CWA Crime in Translation Dagger, the Capital Crime Awards, and the Petrona Award for Best Scandinavian Crime Novel. You Can’t See Me won the Storytel Award for Best Crime Novel of the Year in Iceland in 2023. In 2024, Eva won Iceland’s prestigious Crime Fiction Award, the Blood Drop, for Home before Dark and was shortlisted for the coveted Glass Key. The Forbidden Iceland series has established Eva as one of Iceland’s bestselling and most distinguished crime writers, and her books are published in eighteen languages with more than a million copies sold.
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.
