The field of the potter, or otherwise known as the field of blood, a place related to events that morally stigmatized this specific area. It is a notorious, filthy, and wretched region, a graveyard full of treacherous spots; a foggy place filled with furrows and water erosion.

The location is the infernal quarter of betrayal. The field was purchased with the 'price of blood,' with the thirty pieces of silver of Judas, and it buried within it the scattered entrails of the traitor apostle who hung in that place. In a field of blood were found the thirty 'pieces' of a man who, after executing him with a bullet to the head, then dismembered him.

It could be a Mafia crime executed with terrible precision, based on an old ritual, the fate of every traitor. However, betrayal is a cunning scheme that leads to wrong paths. The line that demarcates truth from falsehood is indistinct, everything in this novel leads to wrong conclusions - even the places and elements.

Montalbano increasingly monologues as he traverses the slopes of exhaustion and a nightly haze torments him: the blinding glare of a treacherous nightmare freezes him, as if he is inside a block of ice, as if he is at the center of a vortex. The inspector must explain the distorted signs of the messages and neutralize the hidden machinations of a betrayal that sweeps him away and affects him to tears.

[Excerpt from the text on the back cover of the edition]