"Commissario Guido Brunetti is visited by a young bureaucrat investigating the lack of official approval for the construction of Brunetti's apartment years before. What bgan as a red tape headache ends in murder when the bureaucrat is later found dead after a mysterious fall from the scaffold. Brunetti starts an investigation that will take him into the unfamiliar and dangerous areas of drug abuse and loan-sharking, and will reveal, once again, what a difference it makes in Venace to have friends in high places." --Back cover.

"A Penguin/Grove Press Book.". "A Commissario Guido Brunetti mystery"--Cover. "A Penguin/Grove Press original mystery"--Back cover. Originally published: London : Heinemann, 2000. Includes an excerpt from Donna Leon's "The Girl of His Dreams," p. 1-9.