Martin Vinge, former notorious journalist, now successful headhunter with a complicated personal life, is in all confidentiality contacted by 85 year-old N.F. Sieger, S.E.O. of Denmark's largest shipping company and oil empire. Sieger hires Martin to find an alternative heir to the firm instead of his son, Daniel Sieger, who for a long time has been destined to take the company into the next era. Martin starts coming up with suitable names for the position, but discovers that he has actually been entangled in a larger impenetrable power game aimed at deciding what is really going to happen to the company; a brutal power struggle that puts an intense pressure on Martin and his private life and relationships.

Set in the neurosurgical ward of Copenhagen's Rigshospitalet, the city and country's main hospital, nicknamed "Riget", "Riget" means "the realm" or "the kingdom" and leads one to think of "dødsriget", the realm of the dead.