Ayoh - Shop now
Kindle Unlimited
Unlimited reading. Over 4 million titles. Learn more
Read for Free
OR
$2.99

Promotions apply when you purchase

These promotions will be applied to this item:

Some promotions may be combined; others are not eligible to be combined with other offers. For details, please see the Terms & Conditions associated with these promotions.

Sold by Amazon.com Services LLC.
Read with our free app
You've subscribed to ! We will preorder your items within 24 hours of when they become available. When new books are released, we'll charge your default payment method for the lowest price available during the pre-order period.
Update your device or payment method, cancel individual pre-orders or your subscription at
Your Memberships & Subscriptions
Kindle app logo image

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

QR code to download the Kindle App

Follow the author

Grant Nicol
Follow
Something went wrong. Please try your request again later.

On A Small Island (The Grímur Karlsson Mysteries Book 1) Kindle Edition

by Grant Nicol (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
3.6 out of 5 stars 390 ratings
In the space of a few days, Ylfa Einarsdóttir sees her peaceful existence in downtown Reykjavík turned on its head. Some unexpected news from one of her sisters and a brutal murder that’s far too close to home for comfort leave her wondering why life has turned on her so suddenly.

When the police fail to take her seriously, her hands-on approach to the investigation soon lands her in hot water.

Following a string of biblical messages left behind by a mysterious nemesis she stumbles upon a dark secret that has finally come home to roost.

As she is about to find out, on a small island, what goes around, comes around.

“A complex and chilling tale…”

“An amazing read!”

“The author has a terrific writing style that keeps the reader mesmerized until the very end of this fantastic tale of not just murder and mystery but of survival…”

“A thrilling read...highly recommended…”

“Hefty amounts of tension and fear, and a resolution that makes you wonder whether surviving sometimes isn't all it's cracked up to be…”

From a review by book blogger Morana Blue…

“Written entirely in the first person from the point of view of one of three sisters, you're drawn immediately into the sudden onset of Ylfa Einarsdóttir's living nightmare as, with frustratingly little help from the Reykjavík detective assigned to her mysterious case, she starts tracking down an obsessed, horribly violent murderer whose sole intent seems to be the destruction of her entire family.

Because you're inside Ylfa's head, you can hear her thinking. Her honesty is startling: 'Most of my friends were sluts. That was a lie; they all were…' Her observation is wry: 'He looked as if his years of seeing the worst possible sides of people had left him enjoying the times now when his misgivings about how rotten they all were inevitably proved to be correct…' - and, as her despair compounds, you feel her self-knowledge sharpen as she knowingly ploughs on toward an inescapable, grimly portentous end: 'In this torment there would be an abyss that I either would see in time and avoid, or be consumed by…'

You feel her heart beginning to ache - and you flinch when it breaks.

It's observantly written as intimate party to the reasoning behind the dangerous investigative steps Ylfa takes - so as her determination and her desperation mount, although you fully understand what she's doing and why she's doing it, you still want to yell 'No! Don't! Don't go there…'

But Ylfa can't help herself. And she takes you with her.

The creepy biblical messages left at every murder scene foreshadow a killer with their own twisted tormented depths - but, though Ylfa can't yet open her eyes to it, it's a torment that Ylfa and the killer actually share - and they're on the same enslaving path to self-destruction.

It's a good - disquieting - read; for the most part because you're entirely locked within Ylfa's world, the minutiae of which - the sandwiches in the car, the cold within her boots, her double cappuccinos - begin to bear auras of frightful magnitude because you can't help but feel that each of the simple things she does, she may never do again.”
Read more
Previous slide of product details
  1. Book 1 of 5
    The Grímur Karlsson Mysteries
  2. Print length
    252 pages
  3. Language
    English
  4. Accessibility
    Learn more
  5. Publication date
    October 27, 2016
  6. File size
    833 KB
  7. Page Flip
    Enabled
  8. Word Wise
    Enabled
  9. Enhanced typesetting
    Enabled
Next slide of product details
Unwell Hydration from Alex Cooper
Hydrate & focus with every sip Shop now

Shop this series

 See full series
There are 5 books in this series.

Customers also bought or read

Page 1 of 1Start overPage 1 of 1
Previous page
Next page
Loading...

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A few pages in, and the combination of a dysfunctional family, flawed but strong-willed and courageous main character, a cruel and gruesome backstory set in the harshness of the Icelandic climate, had me hooked." - Jeannie MacLean (Crime Watch)


"Telling this story totally from Ylfa's viewpoint, creates a strong sense of urgency, and a rising feeling of fear as events start to escalate around her. It's a very realistic feeling - it's doubtful many people placed in the same position as her would cope, know what to do, not question, panic, thrash about a bit so everything about Ylfa's internal voice feels very realistic. There is hefty amounts of tension and fear, and a resolution that makes you wonder whether surviving sometimes isn't all it's cracked up to be." - Karen Chisholm (Australian Crime Fiction)

"I don't want to spoil the ending - but it's very poignant. Indeed, 'Whatever you do in this life, be it good or not so good, it will chase you down through the long lonely years of your life,' Ylfa forewarns. 'And it will catch you up.'" - Morana Blue (Author)

About the Author

Grant left New Zealand over twentyyears ago to settle in Australia but after many years spent maintainingelectric guitars for a variety of indie rock bands in Sydney he found himselfmoving again, this time to Northern Ireland, where he first started toying withthe idea of writing crime fiction. After ten years in Belfast he switchedvenues to Iceland where his first four books are set. 'On A Small Island'(Fahrenheit Press), 'The Mistake' (Number Thirteen Press), 'A Place To BuryStrangers' (Fahrenheit Press) and the as yet unpublished 'Out On The Ice' arethe result of a lot of time spent indoors watching the weather pass him by likeone North Atlantic storm front after another. Just in case Reykjavík wasn'tquite cold enough for him he has now moved to Finland to experience what aproper winter feels like and has started a new series of books based around thesouthern city of Porvoo.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B01M4OX2IL
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Fahrenheit Press
  • Accessibility ‏ : ‎ Learn more
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 27, 2016
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 833 KB
  • Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Unlimited
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 252 pages
  • Page Flip ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Book 1 of 5 ‏ : ‎ The Grímur Karlsson Mysteries
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.6 out of 5 stars 390 ratings

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
Grant Nicol

Grant Nicol

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Grant left New Zealand over twenty years ago to settle in Australia but after many years spent maintaining electric guitars for a variety of indie rock bands in Sydney he found himself moving again, this time to Northern Ireland, where he first started toying with the idea of writing crime fiction. After ten years in Belfast he switched venues to Iceland where his first four books are set. ‘On A Small Island’ (Fahrenheit Press), ‘The Mistake’ (Number Thirteen Press), ‘A Place To Bury Strangers’ (Fahrenheit Press) and the as yet unpublished ‘Out On The Ice’ are the result of a lot of time spent indoors watching the weather pass him by like one North Atlantic storm front after another. Just in case Reykjavík wasn’t quite cold enough for him he has now moved to Finland to experience what a proper winter feels like and has started a new series of books based around the southern city of Porvoo.

Customer reviews

3.6 out of 5 stars
390 global ratings

Review this product

Share your thoughts with other customers
Write a customer review

Customers say

Customers find the book engaging and well-paced, with a wonderful mix of darkness and light. They appreciate its readability, with one customer noting it's never boring.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

Select to learn more

7 customers mention "Pacing"5 positive2 negative

Customers appreciate the pacing of the book, with one noting its strong sense of urgency and wonderful mix of darkness and light, while another describes it as a masterful Icelandic Noir.

"...Telling this story totally from Ylfa's viewpoint, creates a strong sense of urgency, and a rising feeling of fear as events start to escalate around..." Read more

"...Ylfa is a wonderful mix of darkness and light, blindness and strength...." Read more

"...The book is well-paced but lacking that extra insight into the citizens of the country...." Read more

"Really enjoyable noir -- atmospheric, dusk-lit, troubled and compelling characters." Read more

7 customers mention "Readability"7 positive0 negative

Customers find the book readable, with one describing it as masterful and another noting it's never boring.

"...working scenario list or simply read it because this is a really good book...." Read more

"This masterful, chilling, and stormy Nordic noir page-turner is much more than a whodunnit...." Read more

"...Overall a decent first novel, but I did have issues with the amount of grammatical errors in the book, and it should have had better editing before..." Read more

"Will hold your interest . Very good reading" Read more

3 customers mention "Interest"3 positive0 negative

Customers find the book interesting, with one describing it as lively.

"...Lively, restive, fearless and promiscuous Ylfa first hunts, and then is hunted by the person or persons who has taken her sisters and who threatens..." Read more

"Will hold your interest . Very good reading" Read more

"This book is never boring, it's well paced and actually kind of interesting. It does have some small problems though...." Read more

Top reviews from the United States

  • Karen Chisholm
    4.0 out of 5 stars Read ON A SMALL ISLAND so you can tick one off from your most unlikely working scenario list or simply read it because this is a
    Reviewed in the United States on January 7, 2015
    Verified Purchase
    A New Zealand born, Australian and Northern Ireland dwelling, now Iceland based author has written a book set in his adopted city of Reykjavík, with a central female character whose life is turned upside down in a very short space of time, that really works. Read ON A SMALL ISLAND so you can tick one off from your most unlikely working scenario list or simply read it because this is a really good book.

    Ylfa Einarsdóttir has a relatively predictable, quiet life in downtown Reykjavík, even allowing for the friction between her elderly, grumpy farm dwelling father and her two sisters. The elder sister, always a bit of a handful, dramatically and suddenly announces that she's getting out of Iceland and she's going to blackmail her married lover for the cash to facilitate this move. Then she disappears. Her father's companion and worker, and one of their beloved horses on the farm are murdered one night - in full view of the old man, and the only connection between these things seems to be a series of cryptic Biblical messages left at the various scenes of the crime. Somehow the police seem to either be very slow off the mark, or somewhat underwhelmed by the possibility of connections between these two events, and an odd burglary, but obviously something is swirling around Ylfa's father and it's not going to end well.

    Telling this story totally from Ylfa's viewpoint, creates a strong sense of urgency, and a rising feeling of fear as events start to escalate around her. It's a very realistic feeling - it's doubtful many people placed in the same position as her would cope, know what to do, not question, panic, thrash about a bit so everything about Ylfa's internal voice feels very realistic. Obviously telling things from her viewpoint also skews expectations and observations so it's possibly not fair to suggest police aren't using an appropriate sense of urgency, but it certainly could look that way when you're in the centre of the storm. It's also possible that clues and tips are there in the back of Ylfa's head, she just doesn't recognise them for what they are. Either way there's nothing overtly unreliable about Ylfa as a narrator, she's doing the best she can to keep her family, and herself, alive while also searching for an explanation.

    Granted a fair bit of the explanation comes by way of confessions from the killer, but given the extent of the personal jeopardy, the personal feeling, that's not surprising, nor is it unfair or wrong. The reader is given plenty of opportunity to make some educated observations along the way after all.

    Whilst there's not massive amounts of over the top or explicit violence in the book, this review should come with the obligatory crime fiction warning about the death of an animal. There is, however, hefty amounts of tension and fear, and a resolution that makes you wonder whether surviving sometimes isn't all it's cracked up to be.

    [...]
    7 people found this helpful
    Helpful
     Report
  • Jo Perry
    5.0 out of 5 stars Bone-chilling, real, beautiful and masterful Icelandic Noir
    Reviewed in the United States on December 18, 2016
    Verified Purchase
    This masterful, chilling, and stormy Nordic noir page-turner is much more than a whodunnit. In finding the location and identity of her siblings' abductor and the murderer of her father's farm hand and beloved horse, Nicol's stubborn, brave and complex narrator and protagonist, Ylfa Einarsdóttir, must confront horrific family secrets that threaten her life and can obliterate her sense of who she is.
    Ylfa's identity, like that of all Icelanders, comes not from a family name and history, but is defined by a patronymic. Ylfa is Einar's daughter––her father's daughter––to the world and to herself. Who her father was and is becomes the literal and figurative darkness which she must escape to save herself.
    Lively, restive, fearless and promiscuous Ylfa first hunts, and then is hunted by the person or persons who has taken her sisters and who threatens her stern and distant father. Her search takes her farther and farther away from Reykjavík's comfortable mix of tradition and modernity until she, alone in Iceland's stark and bone-chilling cold landscape, must confront the uncontrollable and deadly forces of human nature.
    Ylfa is a wonderful mix of darkness and light, blindness and strength. And I love the way Nicol uses horses as important characters in the novel—as innocents, victims and true measures of our humanity.
    2 people found this helpful
    Helpful
     Report
  • Bibliophile without Borders
    3.0 out of 5 stars decent debut mystery
    Reviewed in the United States on August 31, 2015
    Verified Purchase
    Ylfa Einarsdottir and her sisters live in Reykjavik, Iceland, three siblings from an intensely dysfunctional background, all connected to each other by the thinnest of threads. But someone seems to have targeted their family, with grisly murders continuing to mount until the final pages, with its shocking ending. Ylfa tries to have some semblance of normalcy in her life but has little connection to anyone. She is rather numb, almost as if she is always waiting for that other shoe to drop in her life. Nevertheless, as the book is written with Ylfa being the POV, we can get into her mind and see that there are some doors she does not like to open, and other doors leading to rooms she has blocked off. She copes, she exists, but she is out of touch.

    The book is well-paced but lacking that extra insight into the citizens of the country. Icelanders (indeed, most of the Scandinavian countries) are influenced by their social history which plays a lot into the way people think, something that is brilliantly and effortlessly captured by Arnuldur Indridason, and which Nicol touches on but does not penetrate. Indridason insinuates tragedy into his characters' lives, Nicol clobbers them in the head with it. The plot was ok but more suspense and less gore would have made it better -- at times it was as if the author did not know how to solve plot problems unless another person died. Considering that Iceland has had only 26 homicides since 2000, this scenario of many deaths is so unlikely as to be unbelievable. Yes, there is a bit of crime and there are a few nasty people just like anywhere, but I am a bit mystified why the author built an entire book around murders, especially when another crime was at the heart of the story. Why he didn't explore other possibilities with another scenario is beyond me. I also have an issue with the other characters being one-dimensional. The only person that we can even remotely care about is the rather fey Ylfa, and it was as if he did not want to make anyone else (or their motives) believable or sympathetic.

    Overall a decent first novel, but I did have issues with the amount of grammatical errors in the book, and it should have had better editing before being published.
    Helpful
     Report
  • J. D. Ullman
    2.0 out of 5 stars Not Really a Detective Story
    Reviewed in the United States on August 14, 2018
    Verified Purchase
    I generally enjoy Scandinavian crime fiction, and especially the view of life in Iceland. But this story never really worked. Events just happen, and there is no detection happening. That is, Grimur Karlsson doesn't really solve the case; the case just solves itself while he watches as a very peripheral character in the story.
    Helpful
     Report
  • Nancy Todd
    4.0 out of 5 stars Learn about Iceland
    Reviewed in the United States on November 18, 2015
    Verified Purchase
    Learn about Iceland crime and culture on "a small island"
    One person found this helpful
    Helpful
     Report

Top reviews from other countries

  • Richard Latham
    4.0 out of 5 stars A book to make you think but perhaps not fully move you.
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 5, 2015
    Verified Purchase
    This is a complicated story with a crime story the detectives never really come close to solving; therefore at times it reads more as an autobiography rather than a complex plot unrivalling where anything could happen.
    At times the use of the first person narrative doesn't carry the story for me, it lacks conviction and didn't fully engage me emotionally or with the horror of the crimes as they enfold.
    I understand that the motive within this story is best understood from Ylfa Einarsdóttir's perspective and within the restrictions of writing in the first person Grant Nicol has produced an excellent novel.
    The trade off appears to have been the sense that I felt that you cannot empathise with the main characters or invest in the police investigation.
    To say more about the book would bring spoiler alerts; sufficient to say it is a about historical crimes which find their natural unfolding in present times.
    A book to make you think but perhaps not fully move you.
    However here is an author you should remember as he is a real talent.
    Report
  • Stuart Kenyon
    5.0 out of 5 stars No frills but plenty of thrills
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 18, 2015
    Verified Purchase
    A well-paced and engaging plot with a few excellent twists at the end. The conversational writing style allows one to become intimate with the character, even though she's not someone who evokes sympathy at first. I quickly forgot that the book was written by a male, such was the realism of the lead's portrayal. Perhaps the best feature of this book is its readability; I finished it in just a few hours and was entertained throughout.

    Well done, Mr Nicol.
    Report
  • Elaine M.
    3.0 out of 5 stars Three Stars
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 15, 2015
    Verified Purchase
    A quick read and a page turner.
    Report
  • tpryan
    2.0 out of 5 stars Grim
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 1, 2021
    Verified Purchase
    Apparently this is the first of a series featuring Inspector Grimur although he is far from the central character here. It's largely about a highly dysfunctional family and although it makes a passable crime story to start with we then descend into a largely implausible set of killings. The surviving daughter/sister investigates them herself, is scathing of the police and fairly matter of fact in witnessing the death of a friend. It didn't entice me to explore the series further.
    Report
  • Kindle Customer
    4.0 out of 5 stars Amazingly Atmospheric
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 6, 2016
    Verified Purchase
    This is a novel with great depth, set in Reykjavik, and the cold Icelandic countryside. A man called Einer has three daughters, one just about to make her debut on the cello at a concert when she disappears. Another called Elin lives a rather affluent life in the capital but also goes missing. The remaining daughter, Ylfa, having had very little interest shown by the police, feels compels to investigate herself, a trail that leads back to before she was born. Almost Gothic in feeling, a tragedy soon unfolds, and nothing will ever be the same again.
    Report

Report an issue


Does this item contain inappropriate content?
Report
Do you believe that this item violates a copyright?
Report
Does this item contain quality or formatting issues?
Report