Instead of escaping reality to this fantastic city, this city of phantoms, I was rushing towards it - hard fate awaited me in this soupy shade of a place...

In the oppressive heat of summer in Bologna, English detective Daniel Leicester is reliving his beloved wife Lucia's final days. Vivid memories have been awakened by the sight of her bicycle, missing since the accident that killed her, ridden by a stranger through the city's tight medieval streets.

As unfinished business bleeds - quite literally - into the present, the sickening realisation that Lucia's death wasn't accidental dawns on Daniel. He embarks on a quest for the truth, and this most personal of crusades leads him to two contrasting worlds: the secretive, ancient realm of freemasonry, and the revolutionary 'Reclaim Bologna' activist movement.

What links these two opposing factions? Is there a chance Lucia wasn't the woman Daniel believed her to be? And will the truth be too painful, or too perilous, to bear?