The daughter of a local legend of the investigative arts, Our Heroine searches for her dog while avoiding her biological impulse to solve the mystery of her best friend’s recent murder.

So establishes the baseline of Icelander, which pulsates even more deeply with Norse legend, an alternate reality and a cast of supporting characters including a “rogue library-scientist,” a pair of philosophical investigators, and a many-faced villain. Built on mazes of time, language, and narrator, this literary fireworks display shows you what might happen if Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple had been penned by Nabokov then run through Hitchcock’s lens.

Cover image adapted from photos by Bradley Gordon and Bjørn Giesenbauer.