House of Evidence

On a cold January morning in 1973, inside a stately old house in Reykjavik, blood pools around Jacob Kieler Junior from a fatal gunshot wound to his chest. Detective Jóhann Pálsson, an expert in the emerging field of forensics, is called to the scene and soon discovers something more unsettling than the murder itself: the deceased’s father, Jacob Kieler Senior, a railroad engineer, was shot to death in the same living room nearly thirty years earlier. The case was officially closed as a botched robbery.

Pálsson soon uncovers diaries that portray Kieler Senior as an ambitious man dedicated to bringing the railroad to Iceland no matter the cost. Sensing a deeper and darker mystery afoot, the detective and his colleagues piece together through the elder Kieler’s diaries a family history rich with deceit…

Viktor Arnar Ingolfsson is the author of several books, including Daybreak, which was the basis for the 2008 Icelandic television series Hunting Men. House of Evidence, his third novel, was nominated for the Glass Key Award, given by the Crime Writers Association of Scandinavia, in 2001, and The Flatey Enigma was nominated for the same prize in 2004.

Björg Árnadóttir is Icelandic but has lived most of her life in England; her husband Andrew Cauthery is English but fluent in Icelandic. They have worked together as translators for some years now, both English into Icelandic and Icelandic into English. Their experience includes a wide variety of subjects, including books on Icelandic nature, technical topics, and literature.