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.

A horse breeder is found dead, and almost everything indicates that he has been kicked by his horse. But the post-mortem shows the opposite, the horse breeder had been hit to death and that's a case for Kurt Wallander. The neighbors confirm that he lived alone, but he had visits from a mysterious woman several times. Surprising evidence on the farm shows a whole new side of the horse breeder and somewhere, in the beautiful state of Skåne, there's a dark world that doesn't want to see the daylight.

An American woman is found murdered in Ystad. She has visited an internationally renowned photographer in Ystad, and her husband suspects her of infidelity. Kurt Wallander digs deeper into the woman’s background and her husband, as he believes that there is more to the case than meets the eye. The solution turns out to come from far outside of Sweden.

A lorry has been parked outside of Ystad for several days, and when PC Linda Wallander investigates the lorry she finds it full of dead people. The only survivor is a small child. The Dead have no ID's or documentation and the lorry is stolen. The police start a difficult case to try to find the people behind the crime.

A old man goes to his bank to cash in 20 million kr, with him is his 3 dogs. The man is found dead a few days later and so is his 3 dogs.

The money is no where to be found and the police suspect his neighbour to be the murderer, but nothing is as its seems to be. A few days later the neighbour and his family are also found dead, and Wallander and his colleges have to be sharp to find out who the murderer is. The small town of Soldala is waiting for Wallander to find out why the old man and his 3 dogs and the old mans neighbor and his family must die. And where is the missing 20 mill. Kr is.