Inspector Mehmet Özakin is like a Turkish version of a Prussian, permanently fighting on two fronts at the same time: he battles crime in this city of 15 million inhabitants but also has to struggle against bureaucracy and slackness, common characteristics in Istanbul. Nevertheless, he handles his cases charmingly and full of Mediterranean ease. The investigation of the mysterious murder of a German journalist whose body is found in the room in the Roman cistern of Yerebatan Sarayi takes him and his assistant Mustafa Tombul into the tourist milieu of Istanbul, and from there to the Agean. In German journalist Monika Adler, a former friend and colleague of the murdered woman, Inspector Özakin finds a worthy opponent who is mounting an investigation of her own.