On her first day on duty on the crime squad, Jenny Brox is sent to Møre and Romsdal to assist the police there. An executive in Eidsvåg municipality is found dead, and when the police go to bring the news to his brother, a widower who lives in the old, remote farm Tverrmoen, they open the door and enter a nightmare.
The police try to piece what has happened together.
Who was he really, this farmer at Tverrmoen?
What happened to his wife?
And the cock, why does is crow so incessantly?
Jenny soon realises they have waded into deep water. And soon it turns worse, when they notice odd things that suggest other forces might be at play.