Castagnetti, a bee-keeping private detective, is hired by a businessman to find out who set fire to his car and why. It seems like a dead-end case, nothing more than an instance of mindless vandalism. But before long the businessman is receiving threatening phonecalls, his factory is burnt to the ground and an employee loses his life.

Castagnetti traces similar cases of arson across the city and realises that this sort of systematic intimidation happens when the owner's land is about to be redesignated as residential. That's the time when developers can double their money... just as long as they've got someone on the inside of city hall to tip them off about the redesignation; and just as long as they can persuade someone to sell. The last person to stand in the developers' way was whacked in Milan a year ago. Castagnetti needs to solve the case before his client, and his city, are both buried in cement.