Chief Investigating Officer Elma, who has been with the police in Rejkyavik, moves back to her home town of Akranes after an end to a long relationship. Almost as soon as she arrives, there’s an unusual death—a woman’s body is found in the sea by an old lighthouse. Suicide and accident seem ruled out because the body was dragged there from the parking lot.

The body is identified as Elisabet Hölludóttir, a woman who had lived in Akranes as a child but was said to hate it. The investigators have difficulty finding out much about her, and even her husband seems to know little about her past.

The team’s investigation of the present doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, but Elma becomes convinced that the murder has to do with Elisabet’s past. Her boss, Hörþur, doesn’t agree.

I am fairly sure The Creak on the Stairs is Ægisdóttir’s first book, and in some ways it shows. I found Hörþur’s behavior at times unbelievable, for example. Ægisdóttir seems to be trying to depict him as lackadaisical and too close to the community bigwigs, but in a country where murder is so unusual, there’s no way he would tell his staff to hold their progress reports until the next day because he needs to make a phone call or that he would go home early. Also, a woman refuses to go to the town where she was a child and then is found dead there. Of course the murder has to do with her past. It took them too long to get there.

Other than that, I found the novel interesting enough and liked the heroine. A surprise at the end of the novel made me think Elma was getting interested in her partner too soon, though.

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