David Colacci

When a body is found floating in a canal, strangely disfigured and with multiple stab wounds, Commissario Brunetti is called to investigate and is convinced he recognises the man. However, with no identification except for the distinctive shoes the man was wearing, and no reports of people missing from the Venice area, the case cannot progress.

Brunetti soon realises why he remembers the dead man, and asks Signorina Elettra if she can help him find footage of a farmers' protest the previous autumn. But what was his involvement with the protest, and what does it have to do with his murder?

As Venice experiences a heatwave, Commissario Brunetti plans to escape the city to spend time with his family in the mountains. For Ispettore Vianello, however, the weather is the last thing on his mind, it appears his aunt has become obsessed with horoscopes and has been withdrawing large amounts of money from the family business.

A luminous spring day in Venice, and Commissario Brunetti and his sidekick Vianello play hooky from the Questura along the Grand Canal to rescue Vianello's friend Marco, who has been arrested during an environmental protest. They get him released, only to be faced by the fury of the man's father-in-law, who owns a glass factory on Murano. The old man is seething with rage, and his daughter shares her fear with Brunetti that he will actually hurt her husband.

But it is not Marco who has uncovered the guilty secret of the glass foundries, nor he whose body is found lying in front of the furnaces. The victim has left clues in a copy of Dante and Brunetti must enter an inferno to discover who is burning the land and fouling the waters of Venice's lagoon.