Two young girls are missing. A police officer is found dead. Detective Inspector EmblaNystr m must quickly solve the mystery and find the children before the small town takes matters into their own hands.
When a little girl disappears a few weeks before Christmas, suspicions fall to the last person she was seen with- the mentally disabled teenage boy who gave her a ride home after school. Complicating the matter is the fact that detectives can hardly get a word out of him.
Meanwhile, 28-year-old Detective Inspector Embla is newly back at work and still trying to recover from her recent brush with a killer, which left her unable to get back in the ring to defend her title as Nordic light welterweight champion. When a second child disappears and a police officer is found dead, tensions in the small town of Str mstad, Sweden, reach an all-time high-as are Embla's nightmares. As she hunts for the missing children, Embla can't help but think of the case that has been haunting her for years- the disappearance of her childhood best friend. Could the cases be linked? With each passing dark winter day, the odds of finding the children alive shrink, while desperation mounts. Their fathers want answers and will stop at nothing-including murder-to get them.
