Midsummer approaches & Inspector Kurt Wallander prepares for a holiday with the new woman in his life hopeful that his wayward daughter & his ageing father will cope without him. But his restful summer plans are thrown into disarray when a teenage girl commits suicide before his eyes & a former minister of justice is butchered in the first of a series of apparently motiveless murders. Wallander's desperate hunt for the girl's identity & his furious pursuit of a killer who scalps his victims will throw him & those he loves most into mortal danger. This title is the winner of the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger.