For some time, the notary Lorenzo Capasso has an unusual nocturnal job: an authoritative criminal boss pays him to go to a place where a crime is about to be committed and draw up a notarised act which registers the terms of an agreement between prostitute and client, certification of requirements for the regularity of a black mass or the quality of a consignment of ecstasy. A stratagem the underworld has thought up to guarantee that professional seriousness that its denizens have begun to lose. The notary’s secret hope is to change the course of events and convince the criminals to return to the straight and narrow. He is assisted in this tricky endeavour by the new attractive trainee in the office who is however affected by a mysterious allergy to feelings. But she seems to have finally found in that boredom which, according to her, only the work of a notary manages to guarantee, the means of controlling her malaise. Meanwhile fear is spreading throughout Turin: a serial killer is murdering the city’s most esteemed notaries one after another and leaving bizarre contracts next to the bodies. All the clues seem to point at Capasso who, already in difficulty from a stormy marital separation, must try to get out of trouble by way of incredible escapes and brilliant ideas, and all this in the midst of honest thieves and dishonest upstanding men, grey bank directors and satanic secretaries, good-guy emotional criminals and cops who delude themselves with the idea they’ve reached the truth. A tragicomic, often surrealistic, mystery with continual plot twists and amusing digressions that range from Rachmaninoff concerts to the recipe for tortellini. With a light, ironic touch, the author deals with the decadence of ethics and politics, the criminal underworld and (to the delight of readers who are all, sooner or later, their clients) notaries and stereotypes about them. Perhaps the first time the hero is a notary but, overwhelmed by the stylistic and narrative acrobatics of the novel, one truly regrets that the wait was so long.