Things are looking up for Nic Costa and Gianni Peroni - their humiliating exile in Venice is nearly at an end, and their long-awaited holiday is about to begin. So when they are ordered to investigate an apparently open-and-shut case, a fire in a glass foundry that has claimed two lives, all they want is to wrap it up quickly.

However, as they dig more deeply into the insular glass-making region of Murano and the strange Arcangeli family, things don't quite add up. Under pressure from above to finish quickly so that urbane British millionaire Hugo Massiter's property deal can be concluded, events spiral quickly out of control with devastating consequences . . .

When they realise that the only verdict the local police are interested in is accidental death and a speedily closed file, Costa and Peroni find themselves embroiled in a clandestine and dangerous investigation into the shadowy world that lies beneath Venice's sparkling facade - and where the usual rules do not apply.