I guardiani della laguna

Venice, 1753. During carnival Marco Leon, a secret agent of the State Inquisition, investigates a double murder that occurred in the Sant’Angelo theater during a performance of Goldoni’s Locandiera. The two victims, a young patrician and a company actor, are apparently unrelated. But is the double murder just a coincidence? Or are these two pawns part of the same game? And what could be the role of one of Venice’s most prominent families in this affair? As the investigation proceeds, amid interrogations, gondola chases and ambushes, the case takes on increasingly complex and dangerous traits. With uncommon intuition and the help of his men, Leon tries to piece together the mosaic to find the culprit of a crime that, he is certain, can have far more devastating consequences than a simple crime, going so far as to jeopardize the very fate of the Republic of Venice. And when the number of victims rises, what seemed to many an ordinary murder case turns into a major international intrigue… Among calli, canals, masks and a few forays into dialect, Paolo Lanzotti manages to transport the reader to the most fascinating city in the world when it was still the Serenissima Republic, before its slow but inexorable decline.