Dead Sweet

About Katrin Juliusdottir

Katrín received the Blackbird Award an Icelandic crime-writing prize for her first novel Dead Sweet in 2020. Her debut novel was reviewed well by critics and hit the best-seller lists in the first weeks after publication. Katrín has a political background and was a member of Parliament from 2003 until 2016. Before she was elected to Parliament Katrín was an advisor and project manager at a tech company and a senior buyer and CEO in the retail sector as well as the Managing Director of a student union during her uni years. She worked from a young age in the fishing industry as a store clerk and took night time shifts at a pizza place. She studied Anthropology and has an MBA from Reykjavík University. She was raised in Kópavogur about 15 minutes' drive from downtown Reykjavík. She now lives in the neighbouring town of Garðabær with her family. She is married to author Bjarni M. Bjarnason who encouraged her to start writing. They have four boys. Quentin Bates escaped English suburbia as a teenager jumping at the chance of a gap year working in Iceland. For a variety of reasons the gap year stretched to become a gap decade during which time he went native in the north of Iceland acquiring a new language a new profession as a seaman and a family before decamping en masse for England. He worked as a truck driver teacher netmaker and trawlerman at various times before falling into journalism largely by accident. He is the author of a series of crime novels set in present-day Iceland (Frozen Out Cold Steal Chilled to the Bone Winterlude Cold Comfort and Thin Ice which have been published worldwide. He has translated all of Ragnar Jónassons Dark Iceland series.