It is Christmas in the alpine town of Furth am See and a
six-year-old girl is playing ludo with her grandfather. The
doorbell rings, and the old man goes to answer. The next time the
girl sees him, he is lying with his skull broken, his face a red
pulp against the white snow. From that time on, she does not
speak a single word. Raffael Horn, the psychiatrist engaged to
treat the silent child, reluctantly becomes involved in solving
the murder along with Detective Superintendent Ludwig Kovacs.
Their parallel researches sweep through the town: a young mother
who believes her new-born child is the devil, a Benedictine monk
who uses his iPod to drown the voices in his head, a
high-spending teenager who tortures cats.