Luciano Bianchi lives with his wife and son in the small town of Guastalla. As an intellectual and bibliophile, he works as head of cultural initiatives at a mining plant.

Ambrogio Carugati, a perpetually failing graduate student, turns to a former university classmate, the gynecologist Roberto Setti, to escape the arranged marriage with Gabriella, a girl he doesn't like.

Based on the short story "Sept petites croix dans un carnet" by Georges Simenon. "Sette piccole croci" was the first drama, non-series (what is today called a TV movie), as well as the first police thriller to be broadcast on Italian television. The story follows a tense cat-and-mouse chase across Paris on Christmas Eve.