The Schongau hangman Jakob Kuisl has fallen into a trap: on a visit to Regensburg he finds his sister and brother-in-law dead in the bathhouse. The city guards arrest him as a suspect and throw him into the dungeon. Now he, the executioner, is threatened with torture and execution himself. His daughter Magdalena and the medic Simon Fronwieser search feverishly for the real culprit and discover a plot in which the future of the empire is at stake.
