Sweden, winter, 1991.
Wallander travels across the Baltic Sea, to Riga in Latvia, where he is plunged into a frozen, alien world of police surveillanc.
But what appears to be an open-and-shut case soon takes on a far more sinister aspect.
The dead men were criminals, victims of what seems to have been a gangland hit.
In it are two men, dressed in expensive suits, shot dead.
A few days later a life raft is washed up on a beach.
Inspector Kurt Wallander and his team receive an anonymous tip-off.
Sweden, winter, 1991