The day gets off to a bad start for Montalbano: while trying to break up a fight on Marinella beach, he hits the wrong man and is stopped by the Carabinieri. When he finally gets to the office, the inspector learns about a strange abduction: a woman was abducted, drugged, and then released unharmed only hours later. Within a few days, the same thing happens again. Both women are thirty years old and work in a bank.

Montalbano also has to deal with an arson case. A shop has burned down, and its owner, Marcello Di Carlo, seems to have vanished into thin air. At first this seems like a trivial case, but a third abduction--yet again of a girl who works in a bank--and the discovery of a body bring up new questions.