A serial killer that decapitates people is on the loose in the Stockholm subway. Martin Beck and his colleagues try to catch the killer, while the panic in the city increases.

Jonas is a Copenhagen homicide scene photographer, happily married, with two kids. One day, his car stalls, another car slams into him, runs head on into a third car and flips into the ditch. The other driver, Julia, is critically injured. He visits her in the hospital and is greeted by her family, who assumes he must be the Sebastian she told them about, the new fiance she met in Vietnam.

Jocke has grown up in one of Stockholm's rough suburbs. Nowadays he spends the daytime getting into trouble at school and going into Stockholm in the evenings and getting into even more trouble. After being sentenced to prison he meets Tony. After their release they begin a series of robberies.

A man is found brutally murdered at a running track in the woods. At the same time, Josef resumes the relationship with a former girlfriend from school, Cissi, whose father recently died of a sudden heart attack during a robbery. Josef goes against Alex's directive and begins an unofficial investigation into Cissi's father's death, which puts him in a complicated conflict situation.

A body is found in the water near Liljeholmen. The body belongs to a 39-year-old Danish citizen with a solid criminal record and who was a member of a notorious Danish drug gang. Should the Beck Group get a gang war on their necks? Martin Beck is back to the joy of the entire Beck group. Martin's daughter Inger is not as happy but has to accept her father's decision to start working again.

Jack is pleased with himself for the first time in years. He has decided to stop fucking anything with a pulse and also to cut back on his eager and enthusiastic drug use. Then his best friend crashes into a moose in the middle of the night on the Swedish border. He is found with a hoof buried in his forehead and 2.5 kilos of cocaine in the trunk. Over the next 24 hours, Jack loses his house, his girlfriend leaves him and takes their daughter with her. And as he is about to find out: when you think you have hit rock bottom, it can always get worse.

Three students murdered at century-old boarding school. Killer drowned himself; body never found. On 100th anniversary of killings, student researching incident vanishes, along with others, as dark presence haunts school.

Emma, a young author, goes to see Erik, the publishing editor whom she's sent her debut novel. Their meeting leads to a love affair. The middle-aged Erik leaves his wife. What Erik doesn't know is that Emma recently began a relationship with the dramatist Stefan, whose play is also being published by Erik's company. One day Stefan overdoses and is brought to the emergency ward where Erik's wife Ann works as a doctor. These incident is the start of the story about how four people's lives are crossed during ten years, until the four of them finally end up in the same loneliness they started.

Two patrolling cops stumble on to three criminals who have just stolen large amounts of explosives, and are killed in cold blood. Martin Beck and his team must now work day and night to find out who the killers are and what they are planning to do with the explosives before it's too late. Meanwhile, Gunvald Larsson who was a close friend of one of the murdered cops is ignoring all rules in his quest for revenge.

In a playground in the centre of the urban idyll, the police find a buried wooden box containing a famous and well-respected prosecutor. Martin Beck and his police team initially suspect a highly criminal MC-leader of the attack, but one pretty soon has to re-evaluate the case once the MC-leader is found murdered in a similar wooden box. Soon, more wooden boxes are found and the police realize that they are part of a cat and mouse game with a crazy serial killer. The investigation soon shows that there is a vague connection between the victims in the shape of a 9 year old event, but what Martin Beck does not suspect is that his own life too is at stake, as the murderer has chosen him as the next victim.