In a farmhouse in Lunnarp, an old man is tortured to death and his wife savagely beaten and left for dead. The story focuses on Sweden’s attitude towards immigration and explores themes of racism and national identity.
A lifeboat floats ashore at the coast of Skåne. Inside are two dead men who who’ve been murdered. Policeman Kurt Wallander is assigned to the case. The men are identified with the help of the police in Latvia. Kurt is drawn into complex conspiracy.
There are two parallel plots: one during late apartheid South Africa where incumbent president F.W. de Klerk, leader of the Afrikaner minority which is on the brink of losing power to the African majority under the leadership of the ANC; in the other, detective chief inspector Kurt Wallander is investigating a case of a missing female Methodist real-estate agent outside Ystad. Wallander realizes that the case has deep roots in the history and current development in South Africa.
After killing a man in the line of duty (in The White Lioness), Inspector Kurt Wallander finds himself spiralling into an alcohol-fuelled depression. He has just decided to leave the police when an old friend, Sten Torstensson, approaches him to secretly investigate the recent death of his father in a car accident. Kurt dismisses his friend's suspicions as unlikely, but is convinced by subsequent events.
Two young women and one young man, inexplicably dressed as the nobility of Sweden did during the reign of Gustavus III, are found dead, each slain with a single bullet, their bodies half consumed by animals in the wilderness. Wallander is horrified when he makes a connection between the crime and his close friend Svedberg.
A series of bizarre incidents sweep across Sweden: a man dies in front of an ATM, two young women slaughter an elderly taxi driver, a murder is committed aboard a Baltic Sea ferry, and a sub-station engineer makes a gruesome discovery while investigating the cause of a nationwide power cut. As Wallander investigates, he uncovers a sinister plan to bring the Western world to its knees.
Kurt Wallander’s goddaughter Eva is found dead after taking an overdose. It turns out that the heroin is unusually strong and Kurt searches for those behind the drugs.
