Aurelio Zen of Rome's elite Criminalpol is back, but nobody's supposed to know it... After months in hospital recovering from a bomb attack on his car, Zen is lying low under a false name at a beach resort on the Tuscan coast, waiting to testify in an imminent anti-Mafia trial. He has clear instructions: to sit back and enjoy the classic Italian beach holiday. But Zen is getting restless, and as an alarming number of people are dropping dead around him. Abruptly, the pleasant monotony of beach life is cut short as Zen finds himself transported to a remote and strange world far from home... and wherever he goes, trouble follows.