Senator Isaak Kohler shoots and kills Professor Winter in a crowded restaurant, while Winter is dining with the struggling idealistic young lawyer, Felix Spat. Kohler puts up no defense and is sentenced to twenty years. Kohler then gets his daughter Helene to pay the reluctant Spat to reinvestigate the case, on the assumption that Kohler is innocent. The newspapers pick up on this and begin to question whether Kohler was wrongly convicted.

Constable Studer of the Bern cantonal police is stubborn and gnarled. Because of his nature, he has few friends. He has this in common with the murder victim: James Farny was known by everyone as "The Chinese". The man had traveled the world and now he has been found shot dead in the village cemetery: was it murder or did he kill himself? He had the gun in his hand. Studer doesn't believe it was suicide...

Claudia is a talented girl who is about to embark on a career as an opera singer. However, an incident of purse theft will change everything, because it will bring Paul back to a life that the young woman had planned for.