In the rural farms of South Iceland, mares are kept pregnant year-round for one purpose: their blood. It’s a controversial trade, and someone has just borrowed its methods for murder.

When former champion horse breeder Kjartan is found in a forgotten Reykjavík apartment, hung upside down and completely drained of blood, the crime scene leaves even hardened investigators shaken. Detective Rúna, once a national soccer star, now navigating a very different kind of pressure, is paired with Hanna, a sharp young detective with a gift for digging up what others miss.

The case seems isolated until a second victim, a respected businessman, turns up killed in the exact same ritualistic way. The only link between the two men: a single photograph from a 1990 equestrian tournament. As Rúna and Hanna trace it back through the decades, the trail leads them into the isolated, unforgiving world of blood farming, and into the orbit of Lena, a farmer’s wife enduring a marriage as brutal as anything they’ve seen at a crime scene.

Then the medical examiner delivers the detail that turns their stomachs: the victims were paralyzed but conscious throughout. Whoever is doing this wants their targets awake to feel every second.

When a third name from the photograph is found dead, Rúna and Hanna realize they’re not just hunting a killer; they’re racing to reach the last man on the list before he becomes the next casualty of a vengeance three decades in the making.

A gripping, unflinching Icelandic thriller about the debts that never disappear, and the lengths some will go to make them finally paid.

“A thrilling narrative about the investigation into mysterious and terrifying murders in modern-day Reykjavík that tie back to an atrocity committed in the past. The progression of the investigation is beautifully told, showing how terrifying events disrupt the everyday lives of people who seem perfectly ordinary. The suspense is maintained right until the final page.”
NOMINATION FOR THE ICELANDIC CRIME AWARD 2023 (on Drained)