Mýrin

Jar City (Tainted Blood)

US 2005 hard cover
Author	Arnaldur Indriðason
Original title	Mýrin
Translator	Bernard Scudder
Country	Iceland
Language	Icelandic
Series	Detective Erlendur, #3
Genre	Crime, Mystery novel
Publisher	Harvill Press (UK) Thomas Dunne Books (US) Vintage Books (UK)
Publication date	2000 (Iceland)
Published in English	2004 (UK) 2005 (US)
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	224 pp (Eng. trans.)
ISBN	(UK) (US) (Tainted Blood, UK)
OCLC	57527467
Preceded by	Silent Kill
Followed by	Silence of the Grave

Jar City, also known as Tainted Blood (Icelandic: Mýrin, "The Bog") (  listen ), is a crime novel by Icelandic author Arnaldur Indriðason, first published in Iceland in 2000. It was the first in the Detective Erlendur series to be translated into English (in 2004). In the UK, the title was changed to Tainted Blood when the paperback edition was released.

The novel is at one level a fierce critique of the gene-gathering work of deCODE genetics:

The body of a 70-year-old man has been found in a flat in Norðurmýri having been struck on the head with a glass ashtray. The only clues are a photograph of a young girl's grave, and cryptic note left on the body. Detective Erlendur discovers the victim was accused of a violent rape some forty years earlier, but was never convicted...

The novel won the Scandinavian crime writers' Glass Key award in 2002 for best Nordic crime fiction novel. In 2003, Arnaldur Indriðason's following novel, Silence of the Grave, also won the award, making him the first author to have won the award two years in a row.

An eponymous film of Jar City, was directed by Baltasar Kormákur and premiered in Iceland on 20 October 2006 and in the UK on 12 September 2008.