Mourning the loss of his late wife, Rita, former detective Nico Doyle moves to her home town of Gravigna in the wine region of Chianti. He isn't sure if it's peace he's seeking, but that certainly isn't what he finds: early one morning he hears a gunshot and finds a man with his face blown off near his home.

Salvatore Perillo, the local police inspector, enlists Doyle's help with the murder case. It turns out more than one person in this idyllic corner of Italy knew the victim, and with a very small pool of suspects, including members of Rita's family, Doyle must dig up Gravigna's every last painful secret to get to the truth.