A travelling salesman is found murdered in a small Reykjavik apartment, shot in the head with a pistol. The police quickly set their sights on the foreign soldiers on every street corner that summer of 1941, soldiers whose interactions with the locals—especially the local women—have been creating a great deal of trouble.

The Shadow Killer is Arnaldur Indridason’s nineteenth book. Flovent and Thorson, partners on the Reykjavik police force during the Second World War, were previously introduced in Arnaldur’s award-winning book The Shadow District. This novel tells the story of their first case: the Icelandic-Canadian soldier Thorson is a novice at criminal investigations, while Flovent is more  experienced—the only person, in fact, on the city’s detective force.