Jon Matteson has thoroughly enjoyed his millionaire's holiday in Rhodes, and reluctantly heads back to his everyday, mundane existence at home in Norway, already eager for the next time he can go back to his other hidden life on the Greek island, happily unaware that it will never be.
When his house explodes from an apparent gas leak, his death is at first taken to be an unfortunate accident, even by experienced fire investigators, but it is actually the first in a series of apparently motiveless murders of ex-detectives from Oslo HQ, all made to look like accidents or suicide. Matteson's death is not seen as suspicious, until Cnut is, purely by chance, alerted to the possibility of murder. It still appears to be a one-off, but when other deaths begin to occur among Matteson's old colleagues, some of whom Cnut knew personally twenty years earlier, when he first became a cop, the rush is on to find the talented, well-funded killer.
The forensic science is deep, dirty and diligent, and blonde bombshell Viv Bente, the pathologist, is right there with Cnut in the search for a motive, which, he finds at last, lies way back in his past.