Fredrik Rundstren is an isolated and lonely retired surgeon. Once lauded and respected, his experimentation with alternatives to anesthesia put him at odds with his colleagues. His eccentricities and his acute arthritis eventually forced him into retirement. His second wife has not quite aged past the trophy stage and, being younger and far more mobile than Fredrik, she has gone on with her life without him, playing the resentful and reluctant caregiver.

To ease his loneliness, Fredrik plays chess on-line, and has befriended a teenage girl — a cello prodigy — who is home-schooled by her over-protective mother. This mother, suspecting Fredrik is an internet predator, sets the local police on him. Michael Guttierez, the detective sent to investigate is, like Fredrik, a sufferer of chronic physical pain. An unlikely friendship forms between these two men as Michael attempts to uncover Fredrik’s true motives.