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, haunted by loss and rage. The driver - Helgi's ex-girlfriend Berg ra, 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 Berg ra is later found lifeless in her bath, suspicion falls squarely on Helgi. With his own colleagues turning against him, he must uncover the truth if he is to clear his name, make it home for Christmas, and finally turn the page to begin again.