Inspector Kari Vaara of Helsinki is thrown into a case that sees a beautiful young woman murdered in an apparent sadomasochistic attack... But his investigation leads to him coming up against a wall of silence that implicates the very highest levels of power.
A beautiful Somali immigrant is found dead in a snowfield, her body mutilated, a racial slur carved into her chest. Heading the investigation is Inspector Kari Vaara, the lead detective of the small-town police force. The vicious killing may have been a hate crime, a sex crime-or one and the same. Vaara knows he must keep this case out of the national headlines or else it will send shock waves across Finland, a nation afraid to face its own xenophobia.