Along the canals of Venice, Bognor investigates a mogul’s medieval murder

Irving Silverburger isn’t in Venice to admire the architecture. Flush with cash after finishing his latest tasteless, highly successful blockbuster, he’s in town to indulge his libertine desires. Floating down a canal aboard a vaperetto, Silverburger’s tawdry reverie of more films and more money is pierced by a bolt fired from a crossbow. The killer, a mysterious harlequin, disappears into the masquerade of Carnival.

Unmasking the disguised assassin falls to detective Simon Bognor of the British Board of Trade. Unassuming, sardonic, and past his prime, Bognor’s intelligence and unconventional methods of detection earned him his knighthood. Now he must rely once more on his peculiar methods to penetrate the mysteries of the ancient city at festival time, when the killers are not the only ones in disguise.