On a freezing November night in Rome Commissioner Alec Blume is called to the scene of a shooting.
The victim, Sofia Fontana, the sole witness to a previous shooting, had been under the questioning of Magistrate Principe, whose deteriorating health is affected by the sad fate of this attractive young woman he had become fond of.
Sidestepping protocol, Blume takes the case from Principe. His enquiries lead from a professor with a passion for the Art of Memory to a hospitalised ex-terrorist whose injuries have left her mind innocently blank, and back twenty years to a murderous train station bombing in central Italy. But Blume's disregard for authority, and refusal to kowtow to the politics endemic to the Carabinieri, look set to derail not just the investigation, but his troubled relationship with colleague Caterina Mattiola...
