An old friend of Kurt Wallander, solicitor Sten Torstensson, visits him one day to tell him that his father has passed away close to Brösarp under peculiar circumstances. Kurt does not take his friend's worry seriously. Shortly after, the friend is found brutally murdered and Wallander realises too late that he was wrong. In the hunt for the killer Wallander finds a conspiracy of crimes that leads him to a company that handles transplantations of human organs. Behind the company he finds the image of a man. An elegant and self-confident man who writes his own rules. But who is he? Who gives himself the right to judge over other people? Whose morals decide what is right and wrong? Kurt Wallander is not one of them. In "The man who smiled" he gets himself into crossfire of immorality, betrayal, lies and everything else a man will do to be loved.