Civil war tears Algeria apart. Police captain Brahim Llob, also a writer in his spare time, spends his days hunting down Islamic fundamentalists. He has hence become their prime target; each day his fear grows as he goes to work at the Alger police headquarters. He must find a former senior government official’s daughter who has gone missing.
Upright, with a biting wit and mocking attitude, cynical and disillusioned, Llob heads the investigation with his colleagues, officers Lino and Serdj. He quickly realizes that he’s treading on dangerous ground. His investigation leads him on the trail of a terrorist group given the task of wiping out Algerian intellectuals, and to people implicated in a scandal to do with the national bank.
He then discovers, with the assistance of his colleague Dine, his ousted predecessor, that he has been manipulated by a politico-financial mafia. Now a nuisance for the powers that be, and on the brink of publishing Morituri, an exposé, Llob is forced to take early retirement – and to be fast about it.