Emma Chandler has a comfortable life as junior partner of a firm of chartered accountants in London. When she is sent to Venice to investigate the disappearance of their client Signor Marco dell'Orto's fortune, her safe lifestyle is capsized. Emma is thrown into a disorientating and fast-paced world of deceit and crime. She begins to fall for the enigmatic Italian millionaire Marco while staying in his palazzo, and her arrival does not remain unnoticed in the Venetian backstreets for long. Marco's computers are hacked and his phone is bugged. Emma is being watched. The beautiful city quickly reveals its sinister underworld. The body of a young woman wearing Emma's raincoat is found, floating in a lagoon. There are strange sightings of a cloaked man in the city's backstreets. Should Emma take these ominous signs as a cue to leave? Or should she stay to complete the job she was sent to do? As the plot unfolds against the beautiful backdrop of the Grand Canal, piazzas, dark corners and winding canals, the race is on to solve the mystery. Emma must figure out, with the help of the Venetian police and her old friend the computer expert Professor Windsor, who is behind the stolen fortune, the body in the lagoon, and reveal the identity of the mysterious cloaked man.