Aurelio Zen is in Calabria where he's the temporary Chief of Police for the town of Cosenza. He lacks the Calabrian, rather laid back attitude to law and order, particularly in certain rather delicate situations and the discovery of a body, dressed up as a corpse, in an abandoned village fires his determination to find out who is behind the crime. The investigation is complicated by the presence of a helicopter making repeated flights over the area, supposedly in search of places for a film to be shot on location - only they're actually scanning the river beds in search of treasure which legend has it was buried there many centuries ago.