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A mesmerizing Nordic mystery, uniquely premised, cleverly plotted, and impossible to put down.

Agnes Glin, our third-person-POV narrator, is twenty-seven years old and has lived her entire life in California, although her heritage on her father’s side is Icelandic. Agnes, with her white-blond hair, is still reeling from a recent traumatic break-up, and an agonizing recovery from a terrible knee injury that has left her with both a limp and a secret addiction to pain killers. Agnes also possesses an even more hideous secret — her past has been clouded by the forty-year-old unsolved Icelandic murder of her grandmother Marie and her infant daughter — where the chief suspect (never charged) is Agnes’s own beloved grandfather Einar.

Alienated from her father, Magnus, (a reclusive engineer with no love lost for his assumed-to-be-murderous father) and dealing with the recent death of her grandfather, Einar, himself, Agnes will make the long voyage to Iceland — where a true-crime blogger, Nora, will host Agnes’s visit in return for her insights, as they laboriously re-examine the unsolved murder with an aim to ultimate closure (and for Agnes, redemption, she hopes, for her much-maligned grandfather).

Evocative and chilling, this story is drenched with black rock, lava fields, ice, and of course, menace – a combination that proves dangerous and deadly as Agnes (in the footsteps of Nora) uncovers a bevy of suspects, more crimes, and even more secrets, in the frigid winter of her homeland.

A terrific read, this is a gripping story with interesting, mysterious, local characters aided by an exotic Nordic setting, and led by a deeply flawed and vulnerable heroine with a fascinating psychological background-story.

A great big thank you to #Netgalley, the author and the publisher for an ARC of this book. All thoughts presented are my own.