A hiker is found dead in a remote forest that is popularly known as the "Murder Hole". Opposite the victim is a melting snowman with one eye missing. The start of a series of murders in the forest area near Freudenstadt. The handwriting is always the same: all victims show frostbite, while the left eye is covered with a black gem. The investigative team Maris Bächle and Konrad Diener has Florentin Sneelin in its sights, a reproductive doctor who lives in a romantic moated castle whose ice cellar not only stores champagne. The suspect knew the victims from a stay in a children's home many years ago. The teachers there enforced discipline and order using sometimes sadistic methods. Their wards did the same. There was a strict caste system among the children. Sneelin belonged to the lowest caste. He was a so called "Snow Child", one that his mother wanted "to foist" on his father.
For Anja, her new home in Germany is only a stopover. She would much rather go to America. She skips school and makes up gangster scenes with her little brother. Life is okay until she overhears a phone call from her mother.
A burglar hangs dead in St. Andreasberg from the roof of a holiday home that a mysterious art restorer lives in. This time, the village policeman Frank Koops received unwelcome support in his investigations: The ministerial official Kramer sent from the state capital did not leave his side to critically examine the capacity utilization of the remote police station.
After missing four years, the body of a little boy is found in the forest. An unlikely pair of police officers investigate the boy's death.