In his twenty years as a detective, Cnut has come up against all manner of murders and murderers, but there is always a surprise around the corner, and this killer supplies it. His chosen victims are all teenaged virgins, in their death poses portrayed as clowns and whores, with their private parts on full display and a religious message written on their foreheads. Cnut has seen versions of each of those features before, but now there is a highly original twist: the girls, though still virgins, are all pregnant.

The Biblical quotations from the Book of Isiaih point to the men whose sperm has caused the pregnancies – men whose reputations the killer intends to destroy, and for a detective like Chief Inspector 'Pretty Boy' Lund, of the Stockholm police, the knowledge of whose sperm was used is enough to close the case. Not so with Cnut, who sees beyond the obvious. With his own educationally-challenged, bipolar daughter abducted and likely to be used as a victim, he is driven to finding and stopping the killer before it's too late, even though he knows his life may well be forfeit – he knows a ticking bomb awaits him.