Under the Ash

Jonas Sigurdsson has spent three months fighting the expansion of a geothermal plant he believes will endanger the nation, and he is preparing to take that fight public. Then a volcanic eruption buries Reykjavik in ash, the city closes down, and Jonas is found dead in a basement -- his body arranged with a care that no eruption could explain. Inspector Gunnar Steinsen dislikes surprises, and this case is nothing but. The ash on the corpse does not match the ash outside. The timing is too perfect, the position too composed, the whole scene too quiet. And the only person who seems to understand the significance of the anomaly is a journalist named Elin, who may be in more danger than she knows. As the ash keeps falling and the city grinds to a halt, Gunnar uncovers a trail that runs from a cash-paid vacuum cleaner to a private security firm to the guarded boardroom of Orka Energy. Powerful people have spent years protecting a secret that could kill far more people than a single murder, and someone has already proved they will kill to keep it. Set against an eruption that turns the sun grey and the streets to dust, Under the Ash is a slow-burning mystery about buried truth -- and the cost of digging it up. The wind off Faxafl i Bay had a bite to it, even in late spring. It wasn't the cold so much as the damp, a fine mist that seeped through wool coats and settled in bones. From his office window on the sixth floor of the Al ingish si , J nas Sigur sson watched the grey clouds gather over Mount Esja. He liked the view-the old stone buildings of Reykjav k huddled together, their colourful roofs a defiant splash against the monochrome sky, and beyond them the ever-present sea. It reminded him of what was at stake. J nas was a man of convictions. At fifty-eight, his hair had gone fully silver, but his posture remained that of the farmer's son who'd hauled hay bales in the Eastfjords. He wore a simple dark suit, no tie. His hands, resting on the polished mahogany desk, were large, the knuckles pronounced.