Corylus acquires first of hard-boiled Reykjavík crime trilogy

Award-winning theatre and screenwriter Jón Atli Jónasson has mad the move into crime fiction with his debut novel, Broken.

UK & Commonwealth rights, excluding Canada, to this ‘dramatic and fast-moving police procedural’ were acquired by Corylus Books from David Headley and Broken is set for publication in mid-2025.

This hard boiled narrative centres around the pairing of police officers Dóra, struggling to cope with the effects of a serious head injury sustained in a shoot out, and Rado, the son of Serbian refugees, whose career as a detective is derailed due to family links to a criminal syndicate.

Broken is set in the darker side of present-day Reykjavík that tourists don’t get to see. It’s shot through with dark humour and characters that leap off the page as Dóra and Rado search for a missing teenager against the backdrop of a brutal gang war that embroils Rado’s family.

One of Iceland’s foremost playwrights, Jón Atli Jónasson has been nominated for The Nordic Film Prize on three occasions and was named the Nordic Radio Dramatist in 2011. His plays have been performed in London, Paris, Berlin, Stockholm, Copenhagen and Athens. He has written several scripts for film, most notably The Deep, produced by 101 Studios Iceland, based on his own play, which was shortlisted at the Oscars in 2015 for Best Foreign Feature.