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Book Summary and Reviews of The Reckoning by Yrsa Sigurdardottir

The Reckoning by Yrsa Sigurdardottir

The Reckoning

A Children's House Thriller

by Yrsa Sigurdardottir

  • Critics' Consensus:
  • Published:
  • Feb 2019, 384 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

The Reckoning is the stunning follow-up to The Legacy, which was the start of a thrilling new series that Booklist (starred) recommends for fans of Tana French.

Vaka sits, regretting her choice of coat, on the cold steps of her new school. Her father appears to have forgotten to pick her up, her mother has forgotten to give her this week's pocket money, and the school is already locked for the day. Grownups, she decides, are useless.

With no way to call home, she resigns herself to waiting on the steps until her father remembers her. When a girl approaches, Vaka recognizes her immediately from class, and from her unusual appearance: two of her fingers are missing. The girl lives at the back of the school, on the other side of a high fence, and Vaka asks to call her father from the girl's house. That afternoon is the last time anyone sees Vaka.

Detective Huldar and child psychologist Freyja are called in. Soon, they find themselves at the heart of another shocking case.

From the international number one-bestselling author of The Silence of the Sea, winner of the 2015 Petrona Award for Best Scandinavian Crime Novel Yrsa Sigurdardottir returns with the follow-up to The Legacy.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Starred and Boxed Review. Sigurdardottir just keeps getting better and better. This is must-reading for Scandinavian crime fans." - Publishers Weekly

"Sigurdardottir offsets sharp procedural elements and gruesome crimes with masterful character development and social commentary, creating a riveting, affecting thriller." - Booklist

"Veterans of Sigurdardóttir's peerlessly grim procedurals (The Legacy, 2018, etc.) will share the hero's irrational conviction that all these dire portents are indeed related, and it's not giving too much away to say that they'll be proved shockingly correct." - Kirkus

This information about The Reckoning was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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More Information

Yrsa Sigurdardóttir (pronounced EAR-suh SIG-ur-dar-daughter) lives with her family in Reykjavík. She is a director of one of Iceland's largest engineering firms. Her work is climbing bestseller lists all over the world, and films are currently in production for several of her books. Her titles include The Silence of the Sea and The Legacy.

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