When the police uncover a narcotics smuggling operation, the driver is shot dead. The man turns out to be Superintendent Martin Beck's son. Beck breaks down and steps away from the investigation but later returns at his colleagues request.

Beck and his team are trying to find a serial killer whose victims are spread all over Sweden. An obvious connection is that all the victims are women, and they were all in the same class, and Beck thinks that a scandal back in the past has something to do with the murders. But no one wants to talk about the past and it becomes a struggle to find the perpetrator before the final murder - only one woman is still alive.

Inspector Beck and his team get involved in a large-scale smuggling of cesium 133. A gang from the east uses refugees who with a promise to stay in Sweden and with danger to their own life take in the dangerous explosive chemical substance.

Two patrolling cops stumble on to three criminals who have just stolen large amounts of explosives, and are killed in cold blood. Martin Beck and his team must now work day and night to find out who the killers are and what they are planning to do with the explosives before it's too late. Meanwhile, Gunvald Larsson who was a close friend of one of the murdered cops is ignoring all rules in his quest for revenge.

A Greek restaurant owner is brutally tortured and killed. Beck and his team investigate, and are drawn into a world of smuggling, threats, and violence.

An Asian woman is found dead in the water of Stockholm's archipelago. She has been murdered, and everything indicates that she was a prostitute. Meanwhile a series of break-ins has occurred on an island outside of Stockholm. Suddenly a retired old man is also found dead in his own yard. Now Beck has two cases to solve and they both point in the same direction.

Former sports minister John Vedén disappears and it quickly becomes apparent this is connected to his addiction to gambling.

A famous Swedish lawyer is brutally murdered in his apartment. Martin Beck and his team find a clear murder motive. Hansson had a good chance of winning a case against a multinational company. But it appears Hansson was not completely honest and had several links with the underworld.

Beck gets a call from a colleague who's in Stockholm for an art auction. He was outbid by a woman who was later found dead in his hotel.

A paparazzi photographer is found dead, his apartment ransacked. Was the motive for the murder revenge, blackmail or something even more sinister?