Sandro Cellini

One wet November in Florence a young widow of an eminent Jewish architect comes to visit Sandro Cellini, a disgraced ex-policeman and budding private detective, to ask him to investigate her husband's suicide. But the case abruptly turns into something grimmer and more urgent than he could have imagined.

This year, the heat wave in Florence is fiercer than usual. The city's inhabitants have fled to the cool of the hills of the surrounding countryside. So it is no surprise that a corpse lies unnoticed, bloating in the humid air. Sandro Cellini, former policeman turned private detective has a case: a man who seems to have vanished into thin air - leaving his pregnant young fiancée alone in the city.

The August heat has driven the residents of Florence to the hills and beaches of the countryside, leaving a corpse lying unnoticed amid the shrubbery of a normally busy roundabout. Sandro Cellini, meanwhile, will not be joining the crowds of holidaymakers this year. The former policeman turned private detective has a case: a man who seems to have vanished into thin air, leaving his pregnant young wife alone in the city.

When Niccolo Rosselli, the driven, charismatic leader of a Florentine political movement, collapses at a rally, his young party immediately comes under threat. And when it emerges that his long time partner, Flavia, has disappeared, leaving behind not only a devastated husband but their newborn son, the political becomes dangerously personal - and Sandro Cellini is drafted in to investigate.

When private investigator Sandro Cellini is invited to attend a glamorous launch party in Florence, he has no idea what he's walking into. The former head of security for this elite development has just died under suspicious circumstances, and Sandro finds himself stepping into a dead man's shoes. When one of the residents dies suddenly in suspicious circumstances, events begin to spiral out of control.

Sandro Cellini hasn't set foot in La Vipera, a derelict farmhouse just outside Florence that was once home to a free-living commune, for 40 years - until the discovery of two bodies nearby leads him back there. At the start of his career, Cellini investigated an accusation that minors were being corrupted at La Vipera, but no charges were ever brought. Now, tasked with tracking down former members of the community, he has a chance to discover what really went on. But in order to learn the true nature of the commune's mission, he must face his own traumatic memories.