Summary

Jar City, by Arnaldur Idridason, is a murder mystery of the police procedural variety in which an elderly man is murdered and Detective Erlendur must determine who killed him and why.

In Chapter 1, Erlendur arrives on a rainy night at the scene of the crime and finds a note lying on top of the body of a 69-year-old man who was murdered in his basement apartment. The murder weapon appears to be a large, glass ashtray. Erlendur checks the man’s identification and discovers that his name was Holberg. He then evaluates the scene of the crime for clues and finds that there is no sign of forced entry. The door of the flat had been left wide open when the murderer left. There is no sign of robbery. The three-word message left on the man’s body leads Erlunder to believe that...