ANNO 1790

Barber-surgeon Johan Gustav Daadh’s life takes an unexpected turn as he’s coming back from the war in Finland and seeing a patient home. He gets offered the job of district commissioner, i.e. police inspector. He’s also fallen in love with the chief constable’s wife, Magdalena. When he realizes that Magdalena believes in him, he accepts the position and takes on his former patient, Simon Freund as his assistant. He intends to use his position to make a difference in the name of justice.

A shop owner is found dead with a knife in his chest. A man has been caught seemingly red-handed, but Daadh is not satisfied with what seems to be the obvious solution. He tackles the problem from a different angle and reaches a surprising conclusion. One of Daadh’ s radical friends from the old days needs his protection, but their meeting suddenly makes Daadh the focus of a vengeful woman’s rage.

When Daadh goes to interrogate the person who printed pamphlets libeling the king, he finds the man murdered, his skull crushed in his own printing press. Daadh’s investigation brings him in contact with a radical young French woman and with Marta Raxelius, who’s convinced that Daadh killed her brother and will stop at nothing to get her revenge.

A cunning burglar is wreaking havoc in Stockholm. As the panic spreads, Daadh is under pressure to apprehend the masked thief, who is known to be dangerous and violent. He’s offered help by the renowned hypnotist Cagliostori, who happens to be performing in the city. Daadh allows himself to be hynotised, unwittingly putting his own life in danger.

A bomb explodes in one of Stockholm’s packed coffee houses. Daadh s investigation is interrupted by an order for him to put a stop to the illegal church services held by a pietistic congregation – of which Simon Freund is secretly a member. When a respected priest in the state church is found burned to death, Daadh suspects there’s a link between the two murders, and that the perpetrator could be found in unsettlingly close proximity.

One of Daadh’s old radical comrades is accused of treason and hung on the square. His body is to go to Uppsala University for dissection for the advancement of medical science. When the body disappears and two more murders take place, Daadh realizes that someone will kill indiscriminately to prevent him from uncovering a dangerous truth.

With friends gone and his worst enemy closing in on him, Daadh’s world has been shaken to its foundations. Through his knowledge of medicine, his courage and his ability to see patterns in seemingly unrelated events, Daadh succeeds in using the challenging circumstances to his benefit. But he is also harshly confronted by his own past and forced to bargain with those in power.