Two bodies are found in a lifeboat, washed ashore on the Southern coast of Sweden.  Kurt Wallander and his team investigate the matter, and the more they find the more confusing it becomes.  A rope attached to the lifeboat doesn't belong to it, the victims are dressed after having been murdered, they have been tortured, the lifeboat is Yugoslavian, the press knows things nobody from the police told them...  And when dental research shows the men are probably Russian, or from somewhere in Eastern Europe, everyone is relieved that Foreign Affairs takes over.

The Latvian authorities are convinced the victims are Latvian citizens, and they send major Liepa to assist Wallander's team with their inquiries.  Language barriers make conversations frustrating, but Wallander and Liepa start to have a lot of respect for each other, despite a cock-up at the Swedish police-station.  When nothing more can be done on Swedish grounds major Liepa returns home, and Wallander thinks that's the last he'll hear from the case.  But Liepa is murdered shortly after returning home, and this time it's Wallander who's asked to travel to Riga in Latvia, to assist the Latvian police...

The first part of the book is a pure police-investigation story.  Observation, deduction, and the use of forensic evidence combine with the anonymous witness and more reasoning and elimination.  It's the second part, Wallander in Latvia during the communistic reign, that steers this story into an unexpected direction.  Wallander is extremely uncomfortable there, he doesn't speak the language, doesn't understand the customs, has only a vague idea of what his role in the inquest could be, and has no clue as to who to trust and who not.  The reader doesn't know anything more, and he's swimming in the dark just like Wallander, not sure of where to go, or how long to swim to get there.

Though the story itself is quite interesting, the plot has some flaws.  Wallanders reasons for going back to Latvia are a bit thin, and his organised trip didn't feel quite credible either.  But apart from that this book develops into a compelling thriller with a confused and uncertain inspector, it's a book that keeps the tension until the last pages.