<p>Award-winning author Elizabeth Hand brings us a searing and iconoclastic crime novel in which photographer Cass Neary introduced in the underground classic <i>Generation Loss</i> finds herself drawn into the shadowy world of crime in Scandinavia's coldest corners.</p><p>As this riveting tour-de-force opens the police already want to talk to Cass about a mysterious death she was involved with previously but before they can bring her in Cass accepts a job offer from overseas and hops on a plane.</p><p>In Helsinki she authenticates a series of disturbing but stunning images taken by a famous fashion photographer who has cut himself off from the violent Nordic music scene where he first made his reputation. Paid off by her shady employer she buys a one-way ticket to Reykjavik in search of a lover from her own dark past.</p><p>But when the fashion photographer's mutilated corpse is discovered back in Finland Cass finds herself sucked into a vortex of ancient myth and betrayal vengeance and serial murder set against a bone-splintering soundtrack of black metal and the terrifying beauty of the sunless Icelandic wilderness. Cass Neary finds her own worst fears confirmed: it's always darkest before it turns completely black.</p>