From the bestselling author of The Mysterious Case of The Missing Crime Writer comes the next mystery featuring detective Helgi Reykdal.

"A master of the Icelandic thriller."-New York Post

As snow blankets Reykjavik and Christmas approaches, young detective Helgi is looking forward to a quiet holiday-until those plans are torn away in a flash. One month after his girlfriend Anita is killed in a car accident, he returns to work in Reykjavik, haunted by loss and rage. The driver-Helgi's ex-girlfriend Bergþora, a violent alcoholic whose abuse he kept secret-insists Anita's death was an accident and walks free.

To escape his mounting despair, Helgi throws himself into the unsolved disappearance of his predecessor, Hulda, a retired officer long presumed dead. But as he follows the traces she left behind, the lines between her past and his present begin to blur . . .

When Bergþora is later found lifeless in her bath, suspicion falls squarely on Helgi. With his own colleagues turning against him, can he uncover the truth in time