Everyone is so distracted by the phenomenon of a March snowfall in Florence that no one notices two foreign girls being abducted from the piazza at gunpoint in broad daylight. Even Marshal Guarnaccia has trouble piecing together what he has actually seen: tourists in a car holding up a big map, children going to school, a bus, a drug addict on the steps of Santo Spirito church, a single Sardinian bagpiper in a long, black shepherd's cloak.

One of the girls, a Norwegian university student, turns up in Pontino, a village in the Chianti hills, where she is hospitalized for a concussion, a leg wound, and possible pneumonia. She says she has been released by the kidnappers so she can make contact. The other kidnap victim, an American girl, is being held for ransom. But the marshal thinks she's lying.

Kidnapping has become a local racket. It is up to Marshal Guarnaccia to save the young American and put a stop to a flourishing criminal enterprise.