Tracking a sadistic killer, detective Kurt Wallander follows a string of incidents -- attacks on domestic animals, ritualistic murders of humans -- with help from his daughter, Linda, a new member of the Ystad police force.
Goran, the village idiot, robs a bank then blows himself up. When investigations begin, more sinister activities are revealed involving a doctor who works in the Ystad Hospital.
Military exercises in Ystad make solving five murders difficult. To make things worse, Kurt finds one of the murdered women was a school friend and the first girl he had ever kissed.
While trying to solve a missing-person case, the team stumbles across a far more sinister child-prostitution racket. Meanwhile Kurt is tested for prostate cancer.
A Liberian man is found murdered on a train travelling from Ystad. Wallander and his team have no leads and are put out that Stockholm HQ has sent a man to head the investigation.
Kurt and his men tries to find the connection between a horrible murder taken place in Ystad and the kidnapping of one in the police force daughter. It also seems someone has infiltrated the police and control every move the police make.
While Kurt works on a murder case involving a charming yet evil horse dealer who plays on the vulnerability of lonely women, he finds himself romantically involved with a married woman.
When an American tourist is found murdered after visiting an internationally renowned photographer, her husband believes she was having an affair. Kurt Wallander decides to investigate.
A semi-trailer found dumped and full of dead people leads Kurt Wallander and his team to a convent where the nuns have been assisting illegal refugees into Sweden via Poland.
Kurt Wallander and the team are stumped when they find an old man, Greger Stehn, dead due to poisoning. It appears that Stehn, who looked like a vagrant, was in fact very wealthy.
Following an argument with her lover on her boat, a woman is found dead. Wallander and the Ystad police investigate; their inquiries lead them to a farm commune and to an old friend of Linda's.
