Philosophy, science and art are flourishing. Coffee shops are full of the latest cultural and political theories. The new field of psychoanalysis, formed in the wake of Freud, is just beginning to make itself heard.

And a woman is dead.

Dr Max Liebermann is a young psychoanalyst, and friend to Detective Inspector Oskar Rheinhardt. Rheinhardt, though hard-working, lacks Liebermann's insights and forensic eye - and so Liebermann is called upon to help with police investigations surrounding the death of a beautiful young medium, in what seems at first to be supernatural circumstances.

While Liebermann attempts to get to the bottom of the mystery, he also must decide whether he is to follow his father's advice and marry the beautiful but reserved Clara. But the personal and the professional cannot be wholly separated, and the darkness of Liebermann's case threatens to swallow his entire life.