Finely chopped, the individual parts of a human body are found among the wood chips on a children's playground. Identifying the deceased proves to be difficult. When it becomes clear that the victim is the director of a construction company in Ettlingen, Oskar Lindt, the chief investigator of the Karlsruhe homicide squad, begins the arduous search for motive and perpetrator. In a swamp of crime, greed, power, and corruption, he narrowly escapes death himself.