When an advance scout for an American film company disappears, Aurelio Zen's most recent assignment in remote Calabria becomes anything but routine. Despite a savage attack that has scared the locals silent, Zen is determined to expose the truth. To make matters more complicated, a group of dangerous strangers, led by a rich, single-minded American have arrived to uncover another local mystery—buried treasure—and they will stop at nothing to achieve their goal. What ensues is a fiendishly suspenseful case that only Aurelio Zen could stumble into and only Michael Dibdin could have created: a wild thriller that takes us deep into a remote region of Italy and the darkest corners of human nature.