An illicit rendezvous between strangers ends in murder. The investigation is the beginning of what could prove to be the end of Chief Inspector Winter's own love.

A couple entertains a stranger in a Gothenburg flat, but his choice of death metal music isn't quite what they had in mind. This particular illicit rendezvous will prove to be their last. What greets Chief Inspector Winter and his team when they arrive appears as a stage setting, grotesquely symbolic in its composition. While Winter trawls ads in men's magazines in search of the missing party guest, a trail from the clues left by the killer leads into the cult world of the gothic. A riddle of nightmares, of good versus evil, of sun and shadow.

Winter puts his sharp mind to work on the case. But he has other things to think about: the murder has taken place very close to home, and his pregnant girlfriend is nervous. Now every shadow adopts a sinister shape. Every silent phone call holds menace. When the investigation unearths a possible link between the murders and the police force, even friendly faces are not to be trusted and, when the killer strikes again, Winter is in a race against time, before someone he loves gets hurt.