This twenty-seventh book in the Commissario Brunetti series sees Brunetti looking to find the connection between a boy's alleged drug dabbling and an attack on the boy's father, set against the beguiling Venetian backdrop Leon has been acclaimed for portraying. Brunetti is assisted in this adventure by Signorina Elettra (one of the most popular characters in the series), and by the lessons of Sophocles' "Antigone" - a reading experience that causes him to interpret the events around him with a new clarity.