Captain Exner solves another detective mystery - this time while he's on vacation. The most elegant of Czech crime novelists has chosen a quiet town called Opolná as his place of well-deserved rest. But just as he arrives, the local shoemaker Rambousek, a famous (and wealthy) naive painter, is murdered.

At the end of August, a young woman is chased by an angry mob of hooligans under the windows of a bus because she decides to tear down a poster grossly insulting her husband, the staunch communist and deputy Balcar. She only gets a defence from the prosecutor Ronešová, who decides to convict and prosecute the perpetrators and bystanders of the unfortunate event. The principled Ronešová is oblivious to personal problems and sets out to fight against the relics of a happily extinguished social movement, with the right-wing defence lawyer Kahan being no match for her.

A parable for the end of totalitarianism. Three protagonists - a high official, a secretary, and a border guard - representative of three generations (1948, 1968, 1988) are forced to confront their ideals and places in society through the events of one strange night.