A man enters the bank with something resembling a bomb around his neck. He demands that money is transferred into an account, or he will blow up the bank. The man is known as the village idiot, and claims that Sitting Bull is his father. No one take the case to seriously until they find that the bomb is real. Is the village idiot acting on his own, or are there more people involved? A long and complicated investigation is started by Kurt Wallander and his colleagues.

The dead couple Olof and Carolina Wachman are found murdered in their magnificent estate. The investigation finds that she has been tortured and raped in front of her husband before they were both killed. A death that must have been a relief after the torture they both went through.

Kurt Wallanders daughter Linda and DI Stefan Lindman now have to show that they are as good a pair of investigators as Kurt Wallander himself.

Slowly but surely we see that the murder is about revenge, a revenge that can be traced back 20 years.