In the middle of the night, far north in Norway at Finnmarksvidda, the Sami teenager Elle Jannok is on her way home from a party, when she finds a cell phone ringing. The phone belongs to a missing girl, Sofie. A couple of days later, the local police discover Sofie's body in a caravan three hours south of Finnmark.

Maja Angell, who is studying at the University of London, is defending her highly debated doctoral thesis on criminology & profiling as she hears about the murder case in her old home town in Northern Norway. She defies all warnings and leaves the University to travel North. She has a message for the local police: the man charged with the murder, is not the killer. But no one's willing to listen to her theories. Not until Maja dares to delve into her own most dangerous, repressed memories of childhood will she be able to stop him and soon she realize that the killer is closer than she ever imagined.