The Prey

(Paperback)

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A box of photo albums is found in the attic of a recently sold house in Hofn, a small fishing village on the south coast of Iceland. The new owners return it to the seller in Reykjavik, a man who inherited the house along with his brother. Besides the box, the owners hand him a muddied child's shoe, saying they found it during the removal of the lot's old flagpole. The seller cleans the shoe, searching for a mark like the one his mother used to put on his brother's clothing. He finally finds one, but the name is neither his nor his brother's. It's a girl's name: Salvor. The man is baffled; they never knew a girl named Salvor.

Shortly after the phone rings - it's the nursing home where his mother, an Alzheimer's patient, lives. She's suffered a heart attack and the doctors don't expect her to live much longer. The nurse asks him to let his brother know as well as their sister, Salvor. Their mother has been asking for her.

Johanna is a member of a search and rescue team in Hofn and she's searching for two couples from Reykjavik. Their phones' last location has been pinpointed as the road leading up into the highlands. It's far from clear why these people would have made such a risky trip in the middle of the harsh winter, and they soon find the first dead body.

Hjorvar works at the Stokksnes Radar Station, remotely situated on a small peninsula approximately 30 minutes away from Hofn. He is working alone when the phone connected to the gate rings. It's the first time it's done so since he began working there five months ago. He picks up the phone but can hear only interference and what might be a woman's or a child's voice. Peering outside, he sees no one. The day after, he tells his colleague about the strange events, and the other man is strangely alarmed at the news, He finally he tells Hjorvar that the man he replaced had begun acting oddly just before his death, reporting events very similar to these before he climbed onto the rocks outside and drowned.

THE PREY tells the story of the two couples who made the journey into the highlands, and how the trip of their dreams slowly transformed into a nightmare. What connects this doomed expedition to the ghostly happenings at the radar station and a little girl that died decades ago

Reviews

Praise for Yrsa Sigurdardottir - :
The undisputed Queen of Icelandic Noir -- Simon Kernick
Nail-biting . . . Iceland's long dark nights are at their most minatory in Sigurdardottir's atmospheric thrillers * Financial Times *
One of the best books I've read for a long time: dark, creepy, and gripping from beginning to end -- Stuart MacBride
Sigurdardottir is as confident a writer as ever * The Sunday Times *

Author Bio

Author of the bestselling Thora Gudmundsdottir crime series and several stand-alone thrillers, Yrsa Sigurdardottir was born in Reykjavik, Iceland, in 1963 and works as a civil engineer. She made her crime fiction debut in 2005 with LAST RITUALS, the first instalment in the Thora Gudmundsdottir series, and has been translated into more than 30 languages. Her work stands 'comparison with the finest contemporary crime writing anywhere in the world' according to the Times Literary Supplement. The second instalment in the Thora Gudmundsdottir series, MY SOUL TO TAKE, was shortlisted for the 2010 Shamus Award. In 2011 her stand-alone horror novel I REMEMBER YOU was awarded the Icelandic Crime Fiction Award and was nominated for The Glass Key, and has been made intoa film starring Johannes Haukur by ZikZak Filmworks. In 2015 THE SILENCE OF THE SEA won the Petrona Award for the year's best Scandinavian crime novel, and THE LEGACY, the first novel in the Freyja and Huldar series, was nominated for The Glass Key and won the Icelandic Crime Fiction Award. All of her books have been European bestsellers.