The Last Tenant is a chilling, tightly controlled reminder that feeling at home and being trapped can begin with the same gesture. 

A home should be a place of sanctuary, somewhere to turn the key, shut off from the outside world and relax. In Eva Björg Ægisdóttir’s The Last Tenant, it is never that easy. This, her sixth Forbidden Iceland novel, takes the stress of needing to find somewhere new to live and turns it into something far more chilling: a story of secrets, pressure and danger hidden in the walls.

It’s a pressure that long-time readers of the series will instantly recognise, but, as ever, Ægisdóttir keeps it sharp and fresh. Her storytelling always thrives on split timelines, tightening domestic pressure and detectives whose private lives are never safely off duty. From The Creak on the Stairs through to Boys Who Hurt, the Forbidden Iceland books have made safe, quiet towns feel anything but. The Last Tenant extends that run with confidence.

In this The Last Tenant review, we see how the novel opens with a prologue that drops the temperature at once. An anonymous woman remembers a childhood fear of Icelandic monsters, only to learn as an adult that the real monsters need no folklore. It is the novel’s argument in miniature: the danger is not out in the wilderness, but close enough to hear through the wall. Neighbours who might not be all they appear and secrets built into the very fabric of society.

The case begins when the skeletons of a young woman and a baby are discovered in a barn on a remote, abandoned farm in Hvalfjörður. Forensics reveal they were buried decades apart, turning one bleak find into something more warped and deliberate. West Iceland CID is pulled into a case where the past has not so much been buried as carefully stored away.

Ægisdóttir, of course, has no intention of leaving the reader with only one locked door.

The Last Tenant Review: Secrets, Pressure, and Split Timelines

Threaded through Elma’s investigation is Karitas’s story. A young single mother, she has moved from Reykjavík to Akranes with her four-year-old son after a dispute with her family. She rents a basement flat from an eccentric landlord whose behaviour sits just the wrong side of harmless. Then she meets Kristófer, the friendly neighbour next door, and the idea of beginning again starts to look dangerously plausible.

When news of the skeletons breaks, Karitas must decide whose version of truth she can believe. In this novel, trust is less a comfort than a gamble. One wrong call could put both her and her child in the line of fire.

Where Boys Who Hurt dealt with old crimes and new betrayals, The Last Tenant draws on coercive control and psychological abuse. The threat is not always a raised hand. More often it is doubt administered drop by drop: the sense of being watched, the creeping suspicion that help has arrived wearing the wrong face. Ægisdóttir handles this with control, refusing easy exploitation and letting the horror seep out of ordinary rooms.

Elma, meanwhile, is being squeezed from another direction. Her relationship with Sævar, both partner and colleague, is fraying, and his honesty has begun to look conditional. She is trying to lead a murder investigation, parent a toddler and live with a man who keeps closing doors inside their own home. The personal drama never feels bolted on. In this series, it belongs in the evidence bag.

A Tightly Controlled Icelandic Crime Thriller

As ever, Ægisdóttir refuses to hurry. Suspense gathers in small, exact increments: a landlord who stays a moment too long, a partner who chooses every word like evidence, a child’s drawing that seems to know too much. The dual structure works especially well, with Karitas’s unease casting a long shadow over Elma’s case without ever feeling mechanically imposed.

The final stretch clicks the novel’s locks open one by one: the barn, the dead local girl, Karitas’s shrinking room for escape and the cracks spreading through Elma’s own life. The revelations are knotted rather than tidied away, and the ending carries a proper sting.

The Last Tenant has its weaker joints. A few supporting characters hover at the edges when they might have cut deeper, and the bridge between timelines occasionally depends on coincidence more than the surrounding craft. There are moments, particularly around the middle, when the switches between storylines let a little air into the pressure chamber. These are minor knocks, though, in a novel that shows why this series remains one of Icelandic crime fiction’s most reliable cold fronts. Akranes keeps its secrets close, and Ægisdóttir makes the reader earn each piece of the truth.

With a streaming adaptation now confirmed and the book series now sold in more than twenty-nine languages, Forbidden Iceland clearly has more road ahead. For readers who have followed Elma since The Creak on the Stairs, The Last Tenant is one of the series’ sharpest and most unsettling entries.

Ægisdóttir has always known that the darkest crimes rarely arrive as strangers at the door. They come recommended, smiling, carrying a spare key. The Last Tenant is a chilling, tightly controlled reminder that feeling at home and being trapped can begin with the same gesture.

The Last Tenant by Eva Björg Ægisdóttir, translated by Victoria Cribb, is published by Orenda Books and out now.