Bernard Scudder

Attorney Thóra Guomundsdottir and her new partner, Matthew Reich, journey to a remote corner of Iceland to investigate how the murder of a German student may be connected to the victim's interest in witchcraft.

At a grand Reykjavik hotel, the doorman has been stabbed in the dingy basement room he called home. It is only a few days before Christmas and he was preparing to appear as Santa Claus at a children's party. The manager tries to keep the murder under wraps. A glum detective taking up residence in his hotel and an intrusive murder investigation are not what he needs. As Detective Erlendur quietly surveys the cast of grotesques who populate the hotel,...

A corpse is found on a hill outside the city, and Detective Inspector Erlendur Sveinsson and his team think the body may have been buried for some years. While Erlendur struggles to hold together the crumbling fragments of his own family, slowly but surely he finds out the truth about another unhappy family. Few people are still alive who can tell the tale, but even secrets taken to the grave cannot remain hidden forever.