This stunning debut novel is as dark as a long Icelandic winter night. It veritably hums with macabre menace. The plot is taut, twisty and scarily atmospheric.
I love the way the author has taken the tropes of a traditional crime novel and applied them to a story of supernatural horror.
By making John Dark a sceptic Johann Thorsson has pretty much insured his readers will not be. He treats schizophrenia with compassionate understanding, and the sense of loss is poignant with the ever present risk of grief providing a deep emotional focal point.
I hope to read more from this very talented writer.

I first read Whitesands 3yrs ago, not long before I met the author in Iceland, and I can tell you how much of an impression it made on me because I could still remember the plot, and the main characters' names, to tell my MIL about it just the other day before I started it again! And when you read a LOT this sort of recall isn't always the norm!

John Dark is a no nonsense detective with an uncanny instinct for the truth of things, whose daughter Emily went missing 2yrs ago, and his inability to find her chips away at his self esteem. With his detective partner Monique he is accidentally assigned to a homicide case that was called in as domestic disturbance, their first since Emily went missing. The blood spattered husband is led away and John looks at him and just knows he didn't do it. The man's wife is found stabbed to death but artistically arranged, like a piece of modern art, hours of work.

Daniel Hope is a genius programmer with schizophrenia but his meds really slow his brain down (Þórsson makes a really poignant observation about these drugs later in the book). In a crisis, his boss asks him if he could, off the record, not take them, to try and fix their problem quickly. He does so, working from home with fantastic new kit that they let him keep when they let him go, but the logjam in his mind is cleared and now...he can see an intruder in his house...

But it's an intruder who isn't really there.

John and his wife are living on eggshells with the pain and loss of Emily still unfound, and their son Orlando is growing more unreachable, even though he's still living at home.

The husband is adamant he didn't commit the murder, and that there was someone else in the house, but cctv footage unarguably shows this not to be the case. However, he is moving strangely after the point in time at which he says he must have been coshed over the head.

Then, with the first suspect still in custody, there is a second victim. The cases turn up a slight connection that becomes apparent in the police interview, both husbands went to school at a prep school called Whitesands.

And then there is an episode that convinces John and Monique that something sinister is DEFINITELY calling the shots, and the two men are innocent, even if their physical bodies are not.

What do you do when your core beliefs are proved to be wrong?

John Dark finds himself making desperate and chaotic decisions in both his search for Emily and his attempts to find out what's really behind the Whitesands murders, which just drag him deeper and deeper into trouble with his superiors as the action and tension mount with every chapter.

This dark thriller with a fantastic supernatural element will stay with you long after the final page.

Johann Thorsson's 'Whitesands' starts very promisingly as a supernatural detective crime novel, and ends up delivering a riveting ghost story brimming with originality, suspense, and empathy for all the characters involved. Although the writing isn't always up to par, the pacing is uneven, and the characters sounded too wooden for my taste, I have to admit that I enjoyed the story immensely and the supernatural aspects of it carried it through successfully. By all accounts, this is meant as a first volume, since only one issue is resolved; still, the resolution of that one issue is very satisfying, and builds up to an exciting (sort of) conclusion. The one character with mental issues, Daniel, turned out to be my favorite and the one I cared for most. Most scenes involving him were creepy, spooky, and portrayed compellingly in ways many ghost shows fail at completely. I really hope we'll see him again.

Fits nicely into both the Supernatural and Crime Thriller genres without losing the impact of either.
Hopefully the first of a series, or at least that there’s going to be a second book because it’s left with a bit of an open ending, not exactly a cliff hanger, just an open end.
If there is a second I’ll be at the front of the queue to read it
It would have been 5 stars if it had a closure at the end.