Rick Montoya, eager to experience more of his Italian mother's culture, heads to Rome to start his own translation business - and indulge his appetite for carpaccio and a nice Piemonste red. His uncle, a Roman cop, gives Rick a leg up with a translation gig connected to a homicide, but is Zio really trying to lure him into police work instead? When the wealthy Count Umberto Zimbardi - known for his circle of card-playing friends and a hobby collecting the oral histories of residents in the city's centro storico - is found dead on a bridge over the Riber, Commissario Piero Fontana pulls Rick away from his fledgling business and into the investigation of what appears to be a robbery turned fatal.