On leave due to ill health (and ill discipline), and fleeing his partner Caterina and their newborn daughter Alessia, at home in Rome, Commissioner Alec Blume has retreated to Bari in central Italy, to the beautiful gardens of Villa Romanelli.
Beatrice, the daughter of the villa's gardener, is a herbalist, and offers a course in natural remedies. Blume is drawn to her, but she is in thrall to a local criminal, Pontone, whose interests include the trafficking and prostitution of girls from Eastern Europe. When Blume, acting without sanction or authority, challenges Pontone's power, the vicious reaction drags him into the small town's dark underside. Far from recuperating or resolving his differences with Caterina, Blume is soon tangled in the dangerous case of a missing Romanian girl, and mired in the secrets and horrors of what had seemed a garden of delights.
