Before the day breaks, a white flame ignites on the shore. Suddenly, the desperate flapping, the trembling beating of the wings of a seagull that cries desperately and makes painful turns, as if screwing itself, from below upwards, around its beak turned towards the sky.

The mysterious disappearance of Inspector Fazio from the police department of Vigata; bodies discovered and recovered from wells located in deserted and barren areas; hidden and controversial existences, sad passions, vulgar gossip and slander; binoculars and telescopes, dangerous voyeurism and vile theft; trade of chemical weapons involving immoral politicians; and in a room, an empty chair, amidst indecent and disgusting objects of torture, stains of dried blood, the smell of death, dark things, scattered signs of immoral and horribly inhumane coercion.

And while Montalbano pieces together the fragments of a fragmented criminal story, he cannot escape the disturbance caused by the noise made by the wings of the seagull as it dies...