In a small port town at the end of the 19th century children are disappearing. A mysterious man in black who stalks the town may be Death itself. And nine-year-old Laurin is suffering terrifying dreams and hallucinations of a man carrying a sack and frightened children calling for help from behind closed windows.
In postwar Germany, an American psychiatrist must determine whether Nazi prisoners are fit to go on trial for war crimes, and finds himself in a complex battle of intellect and ethics with Hermann Göring, Hitler's right-hand man.