Montalbano learns that the foreman's former co-worker was a young building contractor who, twenty years earlier, had been accused and convicted of the murder of his partner, with whose wife he was having an affair.

For a final episode, it would have been sympathetic if more actors from previous episodes were featured one more time.Montalbano, after numerous clues, find that the accountant Gargano after stealing money and killing his partner went to the house of his secretary, who, feeling sorry for him because he was having a severe mental breakdown after doing what he did, and to spare him suffering, killed him. He discovers that Michela's lover was an antiques dealer from Bologna who is in financial difficulties because of his gambling problem. The first concerns an alleged robbery and sexual assault suffered by Loredana Di Marti, whose husband comes to report the crime, but the facts as told to the police don’t add up.

Officer Catarella inspects the contents of Sanfilippo's computer and discovers that he documented his sexual exploits; Catarella also finds the draft of what appears to be an unfinished science fiction novel. This offers ample time for twists and turns in the plot as you try to discover the rather improbable circumstances of this engaging story. Montalbano begins to suspect a link between the death of the master builder and his partner's release. Meanwhile Montalbano comes to the rescue of his neighbour, Liliana Lombardo, whose car has been vandalised and he offers to give her a lift to work each morning while her car is being repaired. Montalbano, after discovering that Manzella was one of the two corpses found in the well, realizes that he could not have warned Fazio, and for this very reason he investigates the life of man, finding in his apartment a letter addressed to himself, that Manzella, feeling threatened and thinking he could end badly, had left him.Given the success of the Andrea Camilleri novels, published by Sellerio ( Palermo), RAI with Palomar [ it], commissioned a television series, in co-operation with Sweden's public service SVT, Sveriges Television, of most of the novels and short stories. In a separate story, Agata Cosentino, an archivist and a friend of Livia's, is found dead, killed with a hammer, in the municipal archive of Vigata.