Veum is no longer working as a private investigator. He's got a permanent job as a teacher and has settled down to enjoy domestic bliss with his new girlfriend Karin. Veum gets a brutal meeting with the past, then his bitter enemy "The Knife" is released from prison, determined to take revenge on those who got him convicted for the murder of a teenage girl. Soon Veum is deeply entangled in a case where he must take a tough battle with his conscience; was he innocent in the girl's death? The only answer is "The Knife", but his mind is set on only one thing: revenge.

This is number 8 in the series of Varg Veum, written by Gunnar Staalesen. The plot spins around Veum's girlfriend's sister: she is a prostitute, and through her discovered shady actions, drug dealing, pimping, and other criminal activities.

Varg Veum is summoned by Chief of Police Hamre to a hostage drama on a farm outside Bergen: A married couple has been brutally murdered, and all evidence points to their foster son, 16-year-old Jan Egil. The kid refuses to talk to anyone except Veum, who has known him since childhood. He swears he didn't kill his foster parents. But there are a couple of social workers at the welfare home for stray kids, where Egil landed when he was a year old; they are deeply touched by the drama as defenders of the young population of the social home, for it's been plagued by a new drug called GHB (Hydroxybutyric acid) which killed several kids, When Egil declares himself guilty of the murder, Hamre asks Veum to get his hands out of a solved case. But Veum discovers that Egil is been forced by the knowledge of a disturbing reality concerning his foster father and this drug.

Private detective Varg Veum investigates a case where his good friend Evans, a highly decorated ex-army officer, is falsely accused of bombing amazon, a weapons storage facility, and to prove him innocent.

Varg tries to help a scared girl lost in the woods at night, but he fails to prevent her death. What was this young asylum seeker fleeing from? Was it an accident, or was she killed as a warning to other girls in the same circles? Together, Varg and Karin discover that the dead girl was deeply involved in operations in which young women were forcibly introduced in the country and at the asylum reception centres are cynically exploited. Important people at high government levels pressure the police department to hinder further investigation. What are they trying to hide? Time works against Varg, who must prove the identity of important people behind the ring before more young girls lose their lives.

While investigating a case of sisters who have vanished, Varg Veum is about to become a father. He realizes that the case has connections to the police investigating the murder. Varg is risking his pregnant wife's life if he wants to follow the case.