A man is making a crude leather mask with an iron spike fixed in the middle of the forehead. It is a 'death mask', once used by Icelandic farmers to slaughter calves. He has revenge in mind. Meanwhile, with Detective Erlendur absent, his baseball-loving colleague Sigurdur Óli is in the spotlight: his relationship is on the rocks and soon even his position in the CID is compromised. Moving from the villas of Reykjavík's banking elite to a sordid basement flat, BLACK SKIES is a superb story of greed, pride and murder from one of Europe's most successful crime writers.