Publisher's Synopsis
Inspector Salvatore Montalbano wakes one morning to find a gruesomely bludgeoned horse carcass in front of his seaside home - but when his men come to investigate, it has disappeared, leaving only a trail in the sand. Soon Rachele Esterman, a beautiful and wealthy equestrian, turns up at police headquarters to report her horse missing; it had been stabled on grounds belonging to Saverio Lo Duca, one of the richest men in Sicily - who, it emerges, lost one of his own horses at the same time. His curiosity piqued, Montalbano takes up the case, but things take a disturbingly personal turn with a series of mysterious break-ins at his house. Who has the inspector upset within the strange, glittering world of horse racing and the Mafia?
