Sent on leave after his last, brutal, case, Max Camara returns to his home town in La Mancha, famous for producing the finest saffron in the world.

There, the past keeps pulling at him. The town is exhuming a mass grave from the Civil War, but why is his grandfather behaving so strangely? His old friend Yago is investigating a particularly nasty murder which sets off memories Max has been trying to bury for years. And then there are Yago's whisperings about a saffron mafia...

Max finds himself plunged into the thick of a complex and intensely personal case that will put him in severe danger and have him questioning his past - and his future in the police.