"When Commissario Guido Brunetti begins to have doubts about being a policeman following a stressful case, he decides that it is time for a well-earned break. And what better place to rest than in Sant'Erasmo, an island in the beautiful Venetian laguna? There he meets Davide Casati, the caretaker of the house he's staying in; a strong, silent man who has a strange past and a particular attachment to the bees living around the laguna. Together, Brunetti and Casati spend their days rowing and visiting Casati's precious bees. But then, there's a big storm and nobody knows where Casati is. Not his daughter, not his friends, and not the woman he's secretly been visiting. Eventually, Brunetti and the local authorities find Casati's boata and his body, drowned, tangled up in a rope. Brunetti begins to investigate - but investigate what? A tragic accident? A suicide? Or is Casati's death somehow related to his obsession with the bees living in the laguna, and to the scars on his back from an accident that happened over twenty years agoa?"