In the mystical Snæfellsnes region on Iceland's west coast-at a New Age health resort in a renovated farmhouse-the body of a young woman is discovered, savagely beaten, with pins inserted into her feet. Thóra Gudmundsdóttir, lawyer and single mother of two, has been retained to represent the resort's owner and prime suspect. But a fresh corpse is not the only abomination Thóra encounters here-for local legend says this place is haunted, and a bizarre series of inexplicable occurrences soon suggests it is so.
As Thóra digs deeply into the farm's past, she unearths a shocking history of evil and depravity, and her once-solid view of reality begins to waver. But a second murder, shockingly similar to the first, pulls Thóra back to earth by making two inescapable truths abundantly clear: the killer she seeks is very real . . . and is not finished yet.