Detective Dean MacLeod returns to his homeland - the Isle of Lewis. He retired from the police and his only goal is to forget the past: the death of his little son and divorce from his wife. But, having just begun to prepare to restore the house of his long-dead parents, the former detective is forced to postpone his plans. An unidentified corpse with a slit throat and signs of torture is found in a peat bog. It is usually almost impossible to identify the identity of the “swamp man,” as local police call such “finds” - he could have lain in a peat bog for a thousand years. On the dead man's forearm, detectives discover a portrait of Elvis Presley, and experts report his genetic identity with the DNA of a local farmer, Tormod, who suffers from insanity and has difficulty relating past and present. Along with the murder investigation, a tragic past and family secrets come to the surface, and Dean has to investigate the case, because the daughter of an old farmer, Marchely, is the first and only love of the former detective and wants to know the truth about her father.