Matthias Hack

When a gruesomely staged body is found at the German-Austrian border, two detectives investigate. As the ritual-like murders continue, they enter the killer’s sinister world, set in the Alpine wilderness.

Chief Inspector Benedikt Beissl, who lives in Berchtesgaden with his wife Elisabeth and their three daughters Maria, Johanna and Eva, has been keeping order in Berchtesgaden for decades. To his displeasure, one day he is assigned a new colleague. Until now, the lone inspector has been content to do his work alone.

The criminal psychologist Richard Brock teaches at the University of Vienna. He used to work as a psychologist until his wife took her own life and he lost his license on suspicion of incorrect treatment. In the meantime he has developed a reputation as a particularly good interrogation specialist and is therefore called in by the police in special cases.

Vice Lieutenant Eismayer is the most feared trainer and model macho in the Austrian Military and lives as a gay man in secret. When he falls in love with a young, openly gay soldier, his world gets turned upside down.

This time, the Graz detective Sandra Mohr and her supervisor Sascha Bergmann have to go to the remote Mürztal to solve a bizarre death with the jovial local police officer Ferdinand Franz: The entrepreneur Walter Fürst is dead in his own bed – with strangulation marks on his neck.

While inspector Alexander Haller relies on his investigative instincts, his partner Nikolai Falk has to overcome irrational fears. Screenwriter Nils-Morten Osburg uses the admiration for the Habsburg monarch, who, out of vanity, did not allow herself to be photographed for decades, as the background for a sophisticated story about a photograph that should never have been taken.