A corpse is found on a hill outside the city, and Detective Inspector Erlendur Sveinsson and his team think the body may have been buried for some years. While Erlendur struggles to hold together the crumbling fragments of his own family, slowly but surely he finds out the truth about another unhappy family. Few people are still alive who can tell the tale, but even secrets taken to the grave cannot remain hidden forever.

Inspector Erlendur contends with personal demons while investigating a woman's suicide. Although there are no signs of foul play, Erlendur gradually exposes a sinister plot.

"Into Oblivion, the follow-up to the gritty prequel Reykjavik Nights, gives devoted fans another glimpse of Erlendur in his early days as a young, budding detective. A woman swims in a remote, milky-blue lagoon. Steam rises from the water and as it clears, a body is revealed in the ghostly light. Miles away, a vast aircraft hangar rises behind the perimeter fence of the US military base. A sickening thud is heard as a man's body falls from a high...

A man is making a crude leather mask with an iron spike fixed in the middle of the forehead. It is a "death mask," once used by Icelandic farmers to slaughter calves, and he has revenge in mind. Meanwhile, a school reunion has left Inspector Erlendur's colleague Sigurdur Óli unhappy with life in the police force. And when a favor to a friend goes wrong and a woman dies before his eyes, Óli has a murder investigation on his hands.

"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 dark underworld of the city"--Amazon.com.