In this penultimate installment of the classic Martin Beck series, Beck is drawn into a case that turns up mysterious echoes of his past cases. Now head of the National Murder Squad, Beck is called in to a sleepy Swedish town to investigate a woman's disappearance. When she is found already murdered, her body dredged from the bottom of a lake, suspicions swirl around Folke Bengtsson, the killer Beck caught in the first novel of the series for committing a similar murder, and who has since been released. But Beck is beginning to doubt that Bengtsson is guilty of any murder at all.

Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, wife and husband team, wrote ten Martin Beck mysteries. Maj Sjöwall, besides being a crime novelist, is also a poet.