"Late one night, outside Stockholm, an emaciated young man named Mikael is found wandering. Thirteen years earlier, he went missing along with his younger sister. They were long thought to have been victims of Sweden's most notorious serial killer, Jurek Walter, currently serving a life sentence in a maximum-security psychiatric hospital. Now Mikael tells the police that his sister is still alive and being held by someone he knows only as the Sandman. Years ago, Detective Inspector Joona Linna sacrificed everything to capture Jurek, but he always thought that Jurek had an accomplice. Now he is certain Jurek wasn't working alone. Any chance of rescuing Mikael's sister depends on getting Jurek to talk, and the only agent capable of this is Inspector Saga Bauer, a twenty-seven-year-old prodigy. She will have to go deep undercover in the psychiatric ward where Jurek is imprisoned, and she will have to find a way to get to the psychopath before it's too late" --Dust jacket flap.