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'Hugely enjoyable and thought-provoking, Launch Code brings to mind the classic thrillers of Alister Maclean and Jack Higgins. A well-crafted ingenious mystery, tightly plotted, compelling and contemporary, this could well be Michael Ridpath's best novel yet.' - Stav Sherez, author of the Carrigan & Miller series 1983: Three hundred feet beneath the Atlantic, submarine Lieutenant Bill Guth receives the order he's been dreading: a full nuclear strike against the USSR. Crisis is soon averted, but in the chaos that follows, one crew member ends up dead... 2019: Bill's annual family gathering is interrupted when a historian turns up, eager to uncover the truth about the near-apocalyptic Cold War incident. Bill refuses to answer, but that night the man is brutally murdered. What happened all those years ago? How much is Bill to blame for events in the past? And who will stop at nothing to keep the secrets of 1983 where they belong? 'Deadly state secrets and deadlier family secrets - perfectly crafted, scrupulously researched Launch Code weaves an ingeniously dark and tangled web that will keep you gripped and guessing to the very end. Ridpath is one of the best thriller writers around.' - Craig Russell, author of The Devil Aspect
From the million-copy bestselling author, perfect for fans of Stieg Larsson, Anne Holt, and The Killing. 'Michael Ridpath is trouncing the Scandinavians on their home turf. This is international thriller writing at its best.' Peter James, author of the Roy Grace series Iceland, 2017: When a young Italian tourist is found brutally murdered at a sacred church in northern Iceland, Magnus Jonson, newly returned to the Reykjavik police force, is called in to investigate. At the scene, he finds a stunned TV crew, there to film a documentary on the life of the legendary Viking, Gudrid the Wanderer. Magnus quickly begins to suspect that there may be more links to the murdered woman than anyone in the film crew will acknowledge. As jealousies come to the surface, new tensions replace old friendships, and history begins to rewrite itself, a shocking second murder leads Magnus to question everything he thought he knew...
There are those who will kill to hide the truth. The fifth in the Fire and Ice Icelandic series featuring Magnus Jonson. They follow each other and are best read in order to fully appreciate the protagonist who here takes a sideways step. The plot involves the discovery of an Icelandic shell necklace in an archaeological dig in Nantucket, so proving, some believe, that the Icelanders discovered America long before Columbus. Indeed there is documentation proving this in the Vatican that Columbus wrote to his brother recounting this. A TV documentary is being made about the controversy and now folks start dying. Magnus is put in charge of the investigation. Many believed that the last book, Sea of Stone, completed the series. How wrong they were. It completed a story arc but I think Ridpath will go on writing this highly atmospheric series for a very long time yet.
Alastair Cunningham wakes up in hospital with almost total amnesia. But he knows that something terrible happened in his past, something that haunts him still. A young family friend, Clemence, is called in to help rekindle his memory. Retreating with Alastair to his remote cottage by a Scottish loch, Clemence finds a peculiar manuscript hidden away from prying eyes. Reading the prologue, she discovers a murder by someone very much like a young Alastair. The victim? Clemence's grandmother, Sophie. Could this kindly old man truly be a killer? Clemence becomes determined to find out what happened all those years ago, even if she must risk everything to do so...
Ollie and Magnus Jonson have spent years trying to escape from the shadows of their past. Raised on a remote farmstead in Iceland, both brothers had to endure brutal violence at the hands of their grandfather. Now, two decades later, the past has returned to haunt them both. When Constable Pall Gylfason gets a dispatch call to investigate a suspected homicide on a farmstead, he is surprised to find that Sergeant Magnus Jonson is already at the scene. Magnus identifies the dead man as his estranged grandfather. As Pall begins to review the crime scene it becomes apparent that forensic evidence has been tampered with and that Magnus's version of events doesn't add up. Before long, Magnus is arrested for the murder of his grandfather. When it emerges that his younger brother, Ollie, is in Iceland after two decades in America, Pall begins to think that Magnus may not be the only family member in the frame for murder...
Operation Meltwater: FreeFlow, a group of internet activists committed to the freedom of information have video evidence of a military atrocity in the Middle East and have chosen Iceland as their HQ while they prepare to unleash their greatest coup on the world's media. On the glacial rim of erupting volcano Eyjafjallajoekull, they christen their endeavour Operation Meltwater. Minutes later, in the steam and mist, one of them is murdered. The list of people Freeflow has antagonized is long - the Chinese government, Israeli military, a German Bank, Italian politicians, even American College Fraternities. Magnus Jonson has a long list of suspects but he's getting precious little help from FreeFlow - for an organization dedicated to the transparency of information, they're a secretive bunch. But they are not the only ones with secrets. Asta, a newly qualified priest, has contacted FreeFlow with information about a scandal in the church. Her involvement with FreeFlow will cost her dear. And with the return of Magnus's brother Ollie to Iceland, the feud that has haunted their family for three generations is about to reignite.
Operation Meltwater: FreeFlow, a group of internet activists committed to the freedom of information have video evidence of a military atrocity in the Middle East and have chosen Iceland as their HQ while they prepare to unleash their greatest coup on the world's media. On the glacial rim of erupting volcano Eyjafjallajoekull, they christen their endeavour Operation Meltwater. Minutes later, in the steam and mist, one of them is murdered. The list of people Freeflow has antagonized is long - the Chinese government, Israeli military, a German Bank, Italian politicians, even American College Fraternities. Magnus Jonson has a long list of suspects but he's getting precious little help from FreeFlow - for an organization dedicated to the transparency of information, they're a secretive bunch. But they are not the only ones with secrets. Asta, a newly qualified priest, has contacted FreeFlow with information about a scandal in the church. Her involvement with FreeFlow will cost her dear. And with the return of Magnus's brother Ollie to Iceland, the feud that has haunted their family for three generations is about to reignite.
Operation Meltwater: FreeFlow, a group of internet activists committed to the freedom of information have video evidence of a military atrocity in the Middle East and have chosen Iceland as their HQ while they prepare to unleash their greatest coup on the world's media. On the glacial rim of erupting volcano Eyjafjallajoekull, they christen their endeavour Operation Meltwater. Minutes later, in the steam and mist, one of them is murdered. The list of people Freeflow has antagonized is long - the Chinese government, Israeli military, a German Bank, Italian politicians, even American College Fraternities. Magnus Jonson has a long list of suspects but he's getting precious little help from FreeFlow - for an organization dedicated to the transparency of information, they're a secretive bunch. But they are not the only ones with secrets. Asta, a newly qualified priest, has contacted FreeFlow with information about a scandal in the church. Her involvement with FreeFlow will cost her dear. And with the return of Magnus's brother Ollie to Iceland, the feud that has haunted their family for three generations is about to reignite.
Iceland 1934: Two boys playing in the lava fields that surround their isolated farmsteads see something they shouldn't have. The consequences will haunt them and their families for generations. Iceland 2009: the credit crunch bites. The currency has been devalued, banks nationalized, savings annihilated, lives ruined. Grassroots revolution is in the air, as is the feeling that someone ought to pay...ought to pay the blood price. And in a country with a population of just 300,000 souls, in a country where everyone knows everybody, it isn't hard to draw up a list of exactly who is responsible. And then, one-by-one, to cross them off. Iceland 2010: As bankers and politicians start to die, at home and abroad, it is up to Magnus Jonson to unravel the web of conspirators before they strike again. But while Magnus investigates the crimes of the present, the crimes of the past are catching up with him.
Amid Iceland's wild, volcanic landscape, rumours swirl of an eight-hundred-year-old manuscript inscribed with a long-lost saga about a ring of terrible power. A rediscovered saga alone would be worth a fortune, but, if the rumours can be believed, there is something much more valuable about this one. Something worth killing for. Something that will cost Professor Agnar Haraldsson his life. Untangling murder from myth is Iceland-born, Boston-raised homicide detective Magnus Jonson. Seconded to the Icelandic Police Force for his own protection after he runs afoul of a drug cartel back in Boston, Magnus also has his own reasons for returning to the country of his birth for the first time in nearly two decades - the unsolved murder of his father. And as Magnus is about to discover, the past casts a long shadow in Iceland. Binding Iceland's landscape and history, secrets and superstitions in a strikingly original plot that will span several volumes,
Oli and Magnus Jonson have spent years trying to escape from the shadows of their past. Raised by their grandparents in Bjarnarhoefn, a remote farmstead in Iceland, both brothers had to endure brutal violence at the hands of their grandfather - forever paying the price for their mother's alcoholism and untimely death. Now, two decades later, the past has returned to haunt them both. When Constable Pall Gylfason gets a dispatch call to investigate a suspected homicide in a remote farmstead, he is surprised to find that Detective Magnus Jonson is already at the scene. Magnus identifies the dead man as his estranged grandfather. As Pall begins to review the crime scene it becomes apparent that forensic evidence has been tampered with and that Magnus' version of events doesn't add up. Before long, Magnus is arrested for the murder of his grandfather. When it emerges that his younger brother, Oli, is in Iceland after two decades in America, Pall begins to think that Magnus may not be the only family member in the frame for murder... Can Magnus prove his innocence without implicating his brother? And can both men get to the heart of the twisted secrets that blighted their childhoods? What unfolds is a tale of familial ties and bloodthirsty vengeance, of isolated communities scarred by the tragedies of the past - and of a final, painful reckoning.
