Tracking a sadistic killer, detective Kurt Wallander follows a string of incidents -- attacks on domestic animals, ritualistic murders of humans -- with help from his daughter, Linda, a new member of the Ystad police force.

The national election is approaching, and the Ystad town square is plastered with election posters with local labour party candidate Kenneth Nillson, a politician fighting the fear of immigrants as his electoral focal point. He sees it as his duty to clean Skane's reputation as being racist.

At the same time a train rolls into the train station in Gdansk, Poland. On the train the police find a African male with most of his face shoot away. As the man was murdered in Ystad, the starting point of the train journey this becomes a case for Kurt Wallander and the Ystad police. For Kurt Wallander the case takes an unexpected turn as the murder weapon has ties to a childhood friend.