A detective stumbles upon a murder plot involving the Italian Communist Party.
Amid strikes and demonstrations, after an eerie tour of Palermo’s catacombs,
with its 8,000 skeletons and mummified bodies, a judge is shot dead in broad
daylight. But inspector Lino Ventura is on the case, and as judges keep dropping, he sees a pattern. Could this be a railroaded man’s vengeance? And after demotion and his own wiretapping, Ventura confronts the startling philosophy of Supreme Court judge Max von Sydow. “What impresses most are scenes displaying Rosi’s bravura: an obsessive judge shot in his tomb-like mansion; a party calculatedly shocking in its lavishness… The photography serves perfectly the growing sense of unease, and Ventura is as quietly excellent as ever.” — Time Out