Jar City
Detective Erlendur Sveinsson of the Reykjavik police is called to the basement apartment of an elderly man named Holberg, beaten to death with an ashtray. The only clue is a photograph of a young girl's grave Erlendur finds in a desk drawer. The case opens a 30-year-old buried rape investigation, a daughter Holberg never acknowledged, and a genetic disease that runs through the victim's family. Erlendur turns to Iceland's controversial national DNA database, the real-life Decode Genetics project, and the records inside the database rewrite both the cold case and the present-day murder. Indridason published the book in 2000 as the third Erlendur novel, and it won the Glass Key Award and the CWA Gold Dagger in translation.
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A Reykjavik detective solves the murder of an elderly man by following a 30-year-old buried rape case into Iceland's national DNA database in the Dagger-winning Icelandic Nordic noir.
Yes. Jar City (originally Myrin, 2000) is the first book in Arnaldur Indridason's Detective Erlendur series, though the third in publication order. It is the most popular starting point for English readers.
Yes. A 2006 Icelandic film adaptation directed by Baltasar Kormakur was released internationally and is widely considered the strongest screen adaptation of Arnaldur Indridason's work.
Jar City was written by Arnaldur Indridason, published in 2006 by St. Martin's Press.
Jar City is 170 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Jar City takes most readers 3 to 4 hours to finish.
Jar City is a standalone novel by Arnaldur Indridason, not part of a series.
Jar City is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
