The series opens with Person Unknown, a fiendishly plotted thriller in which oddball loner Daniel breaks into a house in a Reykjavík suburb and finds a heap of unopened post, a bank account that has been filling up for a decade – and a dessicated body on the couch. Getting rid of the body is easy. Becoming the dead man is a little more challenging. Enter Detective Gunna Gísladóttir – the beloved heroine of Quentin Bates’s original Gunnhildur Mysteries. She’s back on the force after a career break she could have done without, and put in charge of a small misfit unit responsible for tracing Iceland’s unclaimed missing persons and unidentified John Does. A dead man walking is exactly the kind of case her team is built for… Daniel just doesn’t know it yet.
Two further Gunnhildur detective novels will follow, in May 2028 and November 2028.
Quentin Bates left English suburbia as a teenager for a gap year working in Iceland at the end of the 1970s. The gap year became a gap decade, and he has had one foot in Iceland ever since. His original Gunnhildur Mysteries were published by Constable & Robinson between 2011 and 2020. As well as his own fiction, he is the translator of leading Icelandic crime writers including Ragnar Jónasson, Lilja Sigurðardóttir and Sólveig Pálsdóttir, and was a co-founder of the Iceland Noir festival.
Laura and Jessie said: “Gunna Gísladóttir is such a compelling heroine, and this clever, addictive thriller about a Slow-Horses style police unit is a fresh standalone entry point to her world for new readers, and a reward for the fans who have followed her ever since Frozen Out. This is Pellerin’s first Nordic noir signing, and will be devoured by readers of Ragnar Jónasson, Lilja Sigurðardóttir and Michael Ridpath, as well as fans of brilliantly plotted police procedurals with memorable heroines. We can’t wait to bring Gunna to new readers.”
“I’m delighted at this opportunity to bring Gunnhildur out of retirement and to re-acquaint myself with her,” Quentin Bates said. “I’m just as delighted to be working with such an innovative, imaginative publisher.”
