A disturbing murder reveals a high-stakes conspiracy among the ruins of postwar Dresden.

Two years after the firebombing that devastated the historic East German city, the suffering continues in the throes of a brutal winter. The wary and exhausted citizens scramble to survive, wolf packs of orphans scavenge for food, and Detective Max Heller is called to the scene of a savage murder. A Russian officer was stabbed to death, and not far from the frozen corpse is an abandoned backpack containing another man's severed head.

If the grisly find belonged to the dead officer, it could implicate the city's all-powerful Soviet military occupiers. If it belonged to the officer's killer, then Heller faces even more troubling questions.

Despite dire warnings from higher-ups on all sides, Heller is determined to discover the answers. His investigation leads him down a trail of unspeakable corruption, desperate murders, and greater looming evils that Heller may never be able to contain.