New policewoman Linda Wallander is waiting for her first big case at Ystad police station and her father, Inspector Kurt Wallander, is getting on her nerves. When her childhood friend Anna mysteriously disappears she is thrown in at the deep end and soon needs her father's help on a fascinating and very dangerous investigation.

When a harmless former asylum resident holds up a bank for money and then blows himself up, Wallander, Linda and the Ystad team are forced to dig for leads to find reasons. Who could have persuaded him to do it, and why? Was the explosion an accident? The answers are unexpected.

The army is in Ystad all week for a training exercise, and Wallander is called to the site of a grim and premeditated double murder, with emotional resonance for him. As the murders continue, Wallander and his team investigate deeper and are forced to concede there may be a link with the troops.

When an abandoned baby is found in a car, Kurt Wallander oversees a large operation to find the missing father. Meanwhile, Linda is visiting a school all week to educate the pupils about the dangers of drugs. When a girl at the school has an overdose, the team begin to see connections between the two cases.

When a Liberian immigrant is found murdered in a train yard, Wallander and the Ystad team follow the trail to an African dancing class and a cuckolded former white supremacist. All of this happens against the backdrop of an election and the possibility of Kurt's childhood friend, the democratic candidate, being elected and 'opening the doors' to more immigrants.

Investigating a grisly local murder and the disappearance of a policeman's daughter, Kurt Wallander and his colleagues at the Ystad station begin to suspect the two are connected. As the investigation proceeds it seems that the criminal knows every move they will make and is practically controlling them. So begins a struggle to outwit a master criminal.