Spiegel-bestseller Ingar Johnsrud (b. 1974) made his literary debut in 2015 with the thriller Those Who Follow (Wienerbrorskapet). In 2025 his sixth crime novel, The Black Widows, (De svarte englene), was released in Norway, with Germany and the Netherlands to follow.

Ingar Johnsrud has received massive attention for his sharp eye for detail, rich and innovative plotting, and confident prose. Praised by critics as a writer who will keep readers on the edge of their seats, Johnsrud has positioned himself as one of the rising stars on the Scandinavian crime fiction scene. For 15 years, Johnsrud was a journalist at one of Norway’s largest media groups, VG. Now he is a full time writer. Ingar Johnsrud lives with his wife, three kids and two dogs, Potus and Ozzy, in Oslo, Norway.

Those Who Follow (Wienerbrorskapet 2015), As We Fall (Kalypso, 2016) and The Cross I Bear (Korset, 2018) are the three installments in the Beier-trilogy, following the police investigator Fredrik Beier and his partner Kafa Iqbal into a bleak and violent Oslo, riddled by secrets and conspiracies.

The Beier-trilogy has been sold to 20 countries. All three reached the prestigious Der Spiegel’s list of bestsellers in Germany. 

In The Homecoming (Gudmoren), we meet the former inmate Stella, who reluctantly returns to the town where she grew up, to bury her father. In a story ridden with murder, dark humor and quirky characters, we are introduced to Johnsrud’s first stand-alone crime. The Homecoming was released in 2020.

Patriots (Patrioter) was released in Norway in 2023. It is the first novel in a new installment about Jens Meidell, a single father and an ambitious politician, and his attempts to navigate in a world of political backstabbing and power struggle. The national election is only a few weeks away when investigators Liselott Benjamin og Martin Tong uncovers a terrorist plot that puts the whole nation in grave danger.

In 2025 The Black Widows (De svarte englene, german title Blendfeuer) came out, the second novel in the Meidell-installment. It is Norway’s National Day, and the police are hunting a man in the crowd along Oslo main street. A few hours earlier, a Norwegian military aircraft disappeared over the Baltic Sea. Jens Meidell is the new Minister of Justice, and on his first day, he learns that secret peace talks are underway between Russians and Ukrainians just outside Oslo. But the talks are on the verge of collapse. Jens and investigators Liselott Benjamin and Martin Tong must navigate a landscape of love, cynicism and hatred. In the shadows lurk even more powerful and brutal forces.

Patriots was awarded The Silver Knife prize in february 2024, and was shortlisted for Norway’s most prestigious prize in crime literature, The Riverton. 

Patriots (German title Echokammer) was released in German in March of 2025, and reached Der Spiegel’s list of bestsellers already in it’s first week.

Johnsrud’s first children’s novel, Fargerne og den store Honningkrigen (The Colorians and The Great War of Honey)  was released in 2018, and illustrated by John S. Jamtli.

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