This late case for the now-retired detective, Erlendur offers a degree of peace to the otherwise unrelenting gloom of Icelandic crime fiction. In the course of this simple, well-told, private investigation of a cold case that turns out to be a 40 year old murder, he meets or restores contact with some of Iceland’s discarded aged citizens, whose sense of an ending reminds us that each generation guards its secrets until it is safe to reveal them.