Berlin: A man is beaten up, the attacker escapes undetected. As a trail leads to Freiburg, Chief Inspector Louise Bonì is sent to investigate.

It's a complex case: the attacker appears to be a professional, the victim a secret service informer, the only witness knows more than she's saying, and the domestic intelligence service is hovering in the background but refusing to cooperate. Industrial espionage appears to be at play, focused on the burgeoning solar energy sector.

Bonì's investigation keeps being obstructed, so yet again she has to rip up the police handbook in her attempt to find out how the different threads of the web are linked. But by the time she discovers the truth, it's already too late for one of those involved . . .

In Inspector Louise Bonì's fifth case, Oliver Bottini weaves a web of tension that traps all those who come too close.

Translated from the German by Jamie Bulloch