October 2022. Ulf Sommer is contacted by the popular crime author Jan Inge Farstad. Farstad runs the podcast Unknown Murderer, which in recent weeks has focused on the unsolved 2013 murder of student Linda Tollefsrud. Ulf led the original investigation, and the case has haunted him ever since. Now, Farstad has received a message from an anonymous source claiming to possess a key piece of information about Linda’s murder: she was scalped.

Ulf knows that only the killer, and the police officers involved in the investigation, could know this. Has the murderer reached out to Farstad? Just days later, the inevitable happens: a Ukrainian refugee, Irina Melnik, and her daughter are found murdered. Both have been scalped.

The hunt for the Scalp Hunter pulls Ulf and Agnete into a labyrinth of lies, in a small town where secrets are guarded with eerie determination in a setting reminiscent of Twin Peaks.