The silent, snow-covered streets of Oslo are a perfect scene of Christmas tranquillity. But as the bells toll for the last Sunday of Advent, a boy s ­body washes up near the shoreline of the city s Aker Bridge. His corpse is unrecognisable. Nobody has bothered to report him missing. One week later Eva Karin Lysgaard, the bishop of Bergen, is found stabbed to death on a deserted street. Eva is a popular public figure, a sixty-two year-old grandmother: why was she on a lone errand in the deserted city, on the night before Christmas? Johanne Vik, criminal researcher and police profiler, is called in to untangle the motivation behind the bishop s murder. But with her husband at the head of this increasingly high-profile investigation, Vik s association with the case is under intense scrutiny. And why does Lysgaard s shocking death lead her towards the sad death of an unknown boy?