The first novel in the series about police investigator Kurt Wallander opens with a gloomy picture: on a winter night in a small village, an old farmer is brutally murdered, with a noose tied around his wife's neck. The dying woman's last word was "foreign." For the time being, this word will remain the only clue for the police. Meanwhile, the same thing, once in the press, provokes a new brutal murder - this time in a refugee camp. Who did it? Who and why needed to kill defenseless old people? And is it true that there is a foreign trace in this case? Wallander and his colleagues will have to check and discard many versions before the killer finally finds a face.