An elderly couple, the Lovgrens, are murdered at their isolated farmstead and Mrs. Lovgren's last word to Wallander seems to be "Foreigners." When this is leaked to the press a migrant labourers' camp is torched and a foreign worker shot by anonymous right wing vigilantes. Daughter Linda, dating a Syrian doctor, accuses Wallander of racism and, although Lovgren's brother-in-law tells the police that the dead man had a hidden fortune, which his murderers stole, and an illegitimate son, neither fact is immediately helpful. However, Wallander's obsessive pursuit of the owner of a car used in the revenge killing yields a result, though it almost costs him his job and the Lovgrens' slayers are finally cornered in a fairground.