[1] Ever since his childhood Svartman has been obsessed by exactness in the measurement of time or distance.

He seeks solace through secretly observing or following people, and at night overcomes fear by cradling his most precious possession, his sounding lead.

Svartman's obsessions and growing distrust of others leads him to submerge himself in a web of deceit involving his employer, Kristina and Sara which increasingly threatens to engulf him.

[2] For The Guardian, Ian Thomson also criticised the writing as staccato and pretentious, but was more positive about the novel as a whole, praising the evocation of the Baltic seascape and the novel's "old-fashioned moral force".

[1] Paul Binding's review for The Independent mostly described the book's plot, but was uniformly positive about its narrative force.