Thirty Days of Darkness

Copenhagen author Hannah is the darling of the literary community and her novels have achieved massive critical acclaim. But nobody actually reads them, and frustrated by writer’s block, Hannah has the feeling that she’s doing something wrong. When she expresses her contempt for genre fiction, Hannah is publicly challenged to write a crime novel in thirty days. Scared that she will lose face, she accepts, and her editor sends her to Húsafjörður – a quiet, tight-knit village in Iceland, filled with colourful local characters – for inspiration. But two days after her arrival, the body of a fisherman’s young son is pulled from the water … and what begins as a search for plot material quickly turns into a messy and dangerous investigation that threatens to uncover secrets that put everything at risk … including Hannah. THIRTY DAYS OF DARKNESS JENNY LUND MADSEN Translated by Megan Turney For Trin CONTENTS TITLE PAGE DEDICATION PROLOGUE 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ABOUT THE AUTHOR ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR COPYRIGHT PROLOGUE His heart was in his mouth. Why should it end here, like this? He wanted to scream, to tear himself apart, to hit someone. Kick them in the head until their life ebbed away. It didn’t matter if it were him, as long as it was someone who deserved it. In that moment, it felt like the whole world deserved to die. He picked up his pace. The field was sodden and muddy as always. He loathed 1 A hand intertwines with another atop the shared armrest. They lean back simultaneously. He turns to look at her a millisecond before she turns to him. He is scared of flying but tries to hide it; she isn’t but pretends she is. They make love with their eyes, falling for each other all over again as they soar into the sky. Her: I camped out on a mountain. Him: I went skiing. Her: I took your breath