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Michael Ridpath,
Author of the Fire and Ice Mystery Books Featuring Magnus Jonson,
Police Procedurals Set in Iceland
Author Michael Ridpath
Nordic Crime Writer British to the Bone
Former bond trader Michael Ridpath was doing quite nicely writing financial thrillers until demand for the genre dried up, forcing Ridpath to reinvent himself.

He decided to tackle a mystery series with a "distinctive detective." After extensive market research, conducted mostly at his local pub, he created the character Magnus Jonson and set the series in Iceland.

Ridpath is a demon for research and the Fire and Ice Mystery Books Featuring Magnus Jonson are all the better for it. There's lots of fascinating detail about Iceland that only an outsider (Ridpath is British) would know to include.

Ridpath elaborates: "I want my readers to have a good idea of Iceland in their mind as they read the book.  I use three techniques for doing this.  Firstly, I pick a couple of symbolic landmarks, which I refer to several times in each book, to try to give the reader a sense of familiarity.  For Reykjavik these are the Hallgrímskirkja (a church that looks like a ballistic missile) and Mount Esja (a mountain ridge that changes color with the weather).  Secondly, I try to pick out bizarre or counterintuitive details--there are loads of these in Iceland.  And lastly I describe things that move--birds, the clouds, weird pedestrians.  What I can’t do is simile and metaphor; my brain just isn’t wired correctly for that."*

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* From:  http://jsydneyjones.wordpress.com/2011/08/22/taking-on-the-nordic-crime-wave-michael-ridpaths-icelandic-crime-novels/
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