Swiss homicide detective Giuliana Linder of the Bern Police and her investigating partner, Renzo Donatelli, are facing cases that may not be what they appear. Renzo is on the scene near the Bern cathedral when a young man repairing a medieval window is injured by falling from a scaffold --- a fall deliberately caused by a teenage boy. Finding evidence that the boy’s attack on the glassworker is linked to his mother’s suicide 15 years earlier, Renzo decides to reexamine the woman’s death, hoping his work on the case will help get him promoted to homicide detective. He learns that the apparent suicide still haunts the injured glassworker, although he was a child of 10 when the boy’s mother died. Now that Renzo has left his wife, Giuliana knows she has to choose what she wants from their future together. Frustrated by her own case, she can’t help getting involved in Renzo’s investigation.

Andi Eberhart is riding her bicycle home on an icy winter night when she is killed in a hit-and-run. Her devastated partner, Nisha, is convinced the death was no accident. Andi had been receiving homophobic hate mail for several years, and the letters grew uglier after the couple’s baby was born. Bern homicide detective Giuliana Linder is assigned to investigate what happened to Andi. As she pieces together the details of Andi and Nisha’s lives, her assistant Renzo Donatelli looks into Andi’s job advising young men drafted into Switzerland’s civilian service. Giuliana and Renzo are again tempted to become more than just friendly colleagues. As both detectives dig into Andi’s life, one thing becomes clear: Andi’s friends and family may have loved her for her honesty, but her outspokenness threatened others --- perhaps enough to get rid of her.

Walking his dog along Bern’s Aare river on an icy November night, a surgeon in his 70s is hit in the face and thrown into the river to drown. When his bruised corpse is found, his watch is missing. The more Swiss police detective Giuliana Linder and her assistant, Renzo Donatelli, learn about Johann Karl Gurtner, the more convinced they are that his death was not random. Talking to Gurtner’s family raises as many questions as it answers, but one thing becomes clear: the surgeon’s relationship with his middle son, Markus, was grim. Tracking others who might have had reason to hate Gurtner, Giuliana and Renzo find themselves once again dealing with their attraction to one another and their ambivalence about having an affair.

When a rave on a hot summer night erupts into violent riots in Bern, Switzerland, a young man is found the next morning bludgeoned to death with a policeman’s club. Seasoned detective Giuliana Linder is assigned to the case. That same day, an elderly organic farmer turns up dead and drenched with pesticide. Enter Giuliana’s younger --- and distractingly attractive --- colleague, Renzo Donatelli, to investigate the second murder. When an unexpected discovery ties the two victims into a single case, Giuliana and Renzo are thrown closer together than ever before. Dangerously close. Will Giuliana be able to handle the threats to her marriage and to her assumptions about the police?