At the invitation of the Swiss ornithologist, Max Boehm, a young French academic, Louis Antioch, agrees to undertake a journey tracing the flight of the stork in order to solve the mystery of the birds' disappearance. But before the trip, Boehm dies of a heart attack in suspicious circumstances.
In a world of knife-edge glaciers, a hideous crime leads two maverick detectives to confront the limits of human evil. A corpse is discovered wedged in an isolated crevice. It has been horribly mutilated. The brilliant but violent ex-commando Pierre Niémans is sent from Paris to the French Alps to lead the investigation. Meanwhile, in a town in south-west France, Karim Abdouf, a young Arab policeman, is trying to find out why the tomb of a young child has been desecrated. When a second baby is found, high up in a glacier, the paths of the two policemen are joined in the search for their killers, a trail that embroils them in the mysterious cult of the Blood-Red Rivers.
Un piccolo raffinato college nel Vermont. Cinque ragazzi ricchi e viziati e il loro insegnante di greco antico, un esteta che esercita sugli allievi una forte seduzione spirituale. A loro si aggiunge un giovane piccolo borghese squattrinato. In pigri weekend consumati tra gli stordimenti di alcol, droga e sottili giochi d'amore, torna a galla il ricordo di un crimine di inaudita violenza. Per nascondere il quale è ora necessario commeterne un altro ancora più spietato...