A human bone is discovered at a construction site near Reykjavik. Inspector Erlendur Sveinnson is on the case, but the trail, which leads back to World War II, has gone very cold indeed. Erlendur (Icelanders use first names) has a very personal reason for his abiding interest in missing persons, and that — combined with the fact that his drug-abusing daughter is in the hospital in a coma — opens the door for plenty of backstory regarding the detective’s troubled history. With a narrative that jumps between the 1940s and the present — without giving away whodunit — the novel generates a sort of emotional claustrophobia, its characters trapped in a world where the pain of the past, though often submerged, is always with us.

The novel won Glass Key award (a Nordic crime fiction award) in 2003, and Gold Dagger award (an award of British Crime Writers’ Association) in 2005. Nominated for Barry Award (an American crime novel award) in 2006.

Caution — British spelling.