A woman falls overboard during a rafting trip in Skagafjörður, hits her head on a rock and later dies without having gained consciousness. Her mother contacts Einar and tells him she was murdered. Einar finds this hard to believe but starts investigating anyway, more as as sop to the old lady, whom he likes, than on suspicion of finding anything suspicious. Shortly afterwards a charismatic young man disappears and Einar gets orders to write up a story about the investigation, while also covering a problem with politics and hooliganism in a village a few hour's drive from Akureyri. His investigation leads to interesting facts about the young man, who was not all he seemed to be, and also about the dead woman's husband. At the same time Einar finds himself embroiled in two separate family dramas with quite different outcomes.