This suspenseful Italian crime drama is set in a Colombian river town and chronicles the series of events that led up to murder. Based on a novel by distinguished author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the tale begins in the present as a middle-aged doctor returns to the village after a twenty-year absence to investigate the murder that occurred just before he left. A flashback ensues. All the trouble began when a wealthy general's son came to town searching for a bride. He found an appropriate girl and was very happy until he discovered that his bride was not a virgin. In a terrible rage he sent the poor girl back to her family where her father beat her into revealing her lover's name. Her twin brothers then set out to punish the guilty fellow, a much-despised womanizer. Though the entire town knew that the brothers planned to kill him, no one intervened. Strangely, the victim died without a fight. The story jumps back to the present to witness the return of the general's son. He runs into his former fiancee and quietly hands back all of the letters she had written him over the years. Not a single one is opened.