Following an unfortunate incident of manslaughter and at a moment of radical change in Germany, Detective Inspector Gereon Roth moves from his old position in Cologne to a new appointment in Berlin. He stumbles into an ever-growing criminal investigation into a pornographic sex ring, discovering that he can trust no one, not even the police.

Set in the 1920s, at the birth of the Weimar Republic amid great economic and political difficulties, this is a tale of corruption, trafficking, and scandal.