Shortly after police discovers the murder of three friends, police inspector Wallander finds his friend and colleague Svedberg dead. First, it is believed that Svedberg killed himself but Wallander soon discovers links between Svedberg, the three friends and a fourth person, a young woman in a mental hospital.
The 5th woman unfolds autumn 1994. An elderly man found in a gillrad pitfall impaled to death on the sharp sharpened bamboo poles, ecstatic praise of crows. Shortly afterwards disappears a florist without a trace and he also found executed in the forest. Kurt Wallander and his colleagues will soon understand that the attacks is all about revenge.
In a small community near Gothenburg three members of a family priest brutally murdered. The walls are covered with up-and-inverted pentagram - the symbol of the devil's face - painted there by the victims blod.Kriminalinspektör Irene Huss drag quickly parallels to a previous case in which a priest was murdered. Even in that case there were satanic connections. But the deeper Irene Huss digs in case the more convinced she becomes that the clergy are not always as pious as they should be
