A late summer night in 1990 a young pregnant woman is brutally murdered by being buried in the sand, to slowly become submerged by the tide. 25 years later, the sadistic murder remains unsolved. Olivia Rönning receives the task of studying the case as a cold case exercise at the Police Academy. Olivia becomes almost obsessed with the murder when she discovers that her father previously worked with the investigation. She quickly realizes that she must get a hold of the principal investigator, detective Tom Stilton, but he seems to have disappeared from the face of the Earth.

59 year-old Ove is the block’s grumpy man. Several years ago he was deposed as president of the condominium association, but he could not give a damn about being deposed and therefore keeps looking over the neighborhood with an iron fist. When pregnant Parvaneh and her family move into the terraced house opposite Ove and accidentally back into Ove’s mailbox it sets off the beginning of an unexpected change in his life.