The night after a reading of her husband’s latest novel, Emily Fetscher (Marie-Christine Friedrich) finds his body, bestselling author Sasha Fetscher (Florian Wagner), stabbed to death in his bed at Villa Berg. When the murder weapon is quickly found at Sasha Fetscher's mistress’ Henriette Trautschke’s home (Claudia Kottal), the case seems already solved for Oberländer and Hoffmann. 
But then forensic pathologist Thomas Egger (Stefan Pohl) makes a strange discovery during the autopsy of the body: the author was already dead when he was stabbed. A nerve poison was the cause of death and the knife was apparently only meant to frame his mistress. 
During their investigation, Oberländer and Hoffmann gain a deep insight into the history of the mysterious Villa Berg and into the secretive world of a bestselling author, in which there seem to be more suspects than clues.