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 Reykjavík 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 Aníta is killed in a car accident, he returns to work in Reykjavík, haunted by loss and rage. The driver—Helgi's ex-girlfriend Bergþóra, a violent alcoholic whose abuse he kept secret—insists Aníta'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 Bergþóra 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