After several Catholic school pupils are murdered, a teacher who is having an affair with one of his students becomes a suspect. When other gruesome murders start occurring shortly thereafter, the teacher suspects that he may be the cause of them.
An adolescent boy and girl meet at a rural, turn-of-the-century Austrian resort where they are vacationing with their respective liberal-minded, single parents. Their budding love affair hits a serious snag when their two parents fall in love as well.
Our hero is the 18-year-old Alessio Mainardi, who receives a token red carnation from a girl named Giovanna and becomes a symbol of love, desire, and even has political overtones as a symbol of the struggle for political freedom in opposition to Fascism.
