The Black Ice Books in Order

The Black Ice series introduces a new investigative team and a slightly different angle on Icelandic crime. Here the focus is on policeman Týr, forensic pathologist Iðunn, and younger officer Karó, who find themselves drawn into cases where buried secrets resurface in some of the country’s harshest environments.

In Can't Run, Can't Hide, a neighbour in a remote fjord breaks into a family home after days of silence and discovers a horrific crime scene. Týr and Iðunn are sent from Reykjavik to support the local force, expecting a contained tragedy. Instead, they uncover a tangle of lies, hidden abuse, and long standing grudges that force each member of the team to confront their own history as well as the family’s.

The second book, The Wake, moves to the Westman Islands off Iceland’s south coast. A group of former university friends travels there for the wake of a woman they once knew well, hoping for a bittersweet reunion. When two bodies are found on a rocky beach near the lighthouse keeper’s house where they are staying, Iðunn is called in to help the local police. For her, the investigation is also personal, she grew up on the islands and returning means facing a complicated family past she has tried to set aside.

Across the series, the dynamic between Týr, Iðunn, and Karó is as important as the individual cases. Týr is experienced but carries a burden of guilt from earlier work; Iðunn is precise and calm in the mortuary yet less sure when old ghosts rise; Karó is ambitious, impulsive, and often stuck in the middle. Their investigations are shaped by these tensions, as well as by the practical challenges of working storms, darkness, and distant communities where everyone seems to know everyone else.

The Black Ice books lean into slow building dread, layered timelines, and mysteries where an accident or betrayal years earlier still shapes the present. At the same time they stay rooted in the everyday, from cramped flats in Reykjavik to ferries, coastguard stations, and village bars on the islands. Readers can pick up any volume as a standalone thriller, but starting with Can't Run, Can't Hide and continuing in order lets the personal history of the trio and their shared scars unfold alongside the crimes they investigate.