Copenhagen author Hannah is the darling of the literary community and her novels have achieved massive critical acclaim. But nobody actually reads them, and frustrated by writer's block, Hannah has the feeling that she's doing something wrong. When she expresses her contempt for genre fiction, Hanna is publicly challenged to write a crime novel in 30 days. Scared that she will lose face, she accepts, and her editor sends her to Húsafjöður; a quiet, tight-knit village in Iceland, filled with colourful local characters - for inspiration. But two days after her arrival, the body of a fisherman's young son is pulled from the water. . . and what begins as a search for plot material quickly turns into a messy and dangerous investigation that threatens to uncover secrets that put everything at risk. . . including Hannah.