The hugely successful young author Xaver Pucher still had a lot to live for. But on the way to meet his agent and hand over his new manuscript, he is murdered in the sleeper car on board the train from Vienna to Berlin. The police find no sign of the manuscript in his luggage, just traces of cocaine. Was Pucher's murder connected to drugs? Or have the Islamist group, for whom his books went too far, acted on their threats? Vienna and Berlin investigate the case together: on the Austrian side Anna Habel, in her late thirties, temperamental and untiring, and on the German side Thomas Bernhardt, in his mid fifties, sarcastic and with an air of melancholy. With their differing temperaments it is not long before they clash, but for the sake of the case and under pressure from the public they have to find a way to work together. Their investigations lead them to Vienna's central graveyard, to the Prater Park and the alleys of the historic city and to the hip offices of Berlin's Prenzlauer Berg, the courtyards of Schöneberg and the bars of Neukölln.