Erlendur Sveinsson mysteries

Following an earthquake, the water level of an Icelandic lake suddenly falls, rvealing a skeleton. Inspector Erlendur's investigatiion takes him back to the Cold War era, when bright, left-wing students in Iceland were sent to study in the "heavenly state" of Communist East Germany. Teeming with spies and informants, though, their "heavenly state" became a nightmare of betrayal and murder.

Unofficially investigating a suspicious suicide, Inspector Erlendur becomes increasingly unsettled by the unsolved cases of two young people who went missing decades earlier under circumstances tied to his own past.

The loner Erlendur has recently joined the police force as a young officer and immediately sinks into the darkness of Reykjavík's underworld. The beat on the streets in Reykjavik is busy: traffic accidents, theft, domestic violence, contraband, and an unexplained death. When a homeless man he met regularly on the night shift is found drowned in a ditch, no one seems to care. But his fate haunts Erlendur and drags him inexorably into the strange and...