Hamburg 1947: it is the year of extremes. After a bitterly cold winter of starvation, the bombed city groans under excruciating heat. And Chief Inspector Frank Stave is confronted with a new case. In the ruins of a shipyard, the corpse of a boy is found and Stave's hunt for the killer leads him into the world of 'wolf children', orphaned children who have fled from the Occupied Eastern Territories and now united in gangs. When two more bodies are discovered Stave is under even increasing pressure as he struggles to keep his personal life together too.