The story follows a 16-year-old Icelandic boy, Ari, who lives with his mother in Reykjavík, She has to leave the country for a new job, sending him back to the small town of his youth. There he finds his old friend, suddenly a young woman with a tricky romantic relationship; and his father has become a victim of the financial crisis.

As a ferry carrying 300 passengers from Denmark pulls into an Icelandic town’s small port, heavy snow begins to fall. The ferry can’t leave until the storm passes and the main road into town is impassable. A mutilated and dismembered body washes on the shore, an unidentifiable man murdered only hours ago. The local police chief, Andri Olafssun, whose personal life is in shatters, realizes a killer has descended into his town. As word spreads, order disintegrates into chaos as the ferry’s passengers and the town’s residents realize they are all possible suspects and that a killer is trapped among them.