On a gloomy morning in Vigàta, a call from Fazio rouses Inspector Montalbano from a nightmare. A man called Giugiù Nicotra has been found dead in the skeletal workings of a construction site, a place now entombed by a sea of mud from recent floods. Following A Nest of Vipers this 22nd investigation gets off to a slow start, but as Montalbano wades through a corrupt world in which construction firms and public officials thrive, he is obsessed by the thought that Nicotra—shot in the back while fleeing—had been trying to communicate something.