"In a departure from her series featuring lawyer Thora Gudmundsdottir, Iceland’s queen of suspense combines modern crime detection with mysticism to chilling effect. The sense of foreboding starts early, as married couple Katrin and Gardar, along with Lif, the widow of Gardar’s best friend, travel from Reykjavik to isolated Hesteyri to renovate the old house they’ve bought to turn into a guesthouse. Concerns about finances and the viability of the project pale as something about the house makes the trio want to leave it. Across the fjord, psychiatrist Freyr starts working with police on the unlikely connection between an elderly suicide victim and a six-year-old boy who disappeared three years earlier and was never found. Inevitably the two plot lines collide, revealing human behavior and failings—lies, betrayals, assaults, murder—that explain only part of what has happened from a time decades earlier to the present. Sigurdardottir skillfully builds the early ominous warnings to the point that readers find themselves shouting to Katrin to cut her losses and go home, as the unexplained becomes terrifying. Nordic mystery writers can raise goosebumps as few others can, and Sigurdardottir shows she’s one of the best." ~ Michele Leber, Booklist
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