Venice, 1742. Tito Amato has regained his zest for performing and is once again singing lead roles at the Teatro San Marco. On opening night, the famous castrato has the entire audience entranced-except for one box with its scarlet curtains stubbornly drawn. Annoyed at being ignored, Tito aims the full force of his golden throat at the fourth-tier box. He is astounded when the curtains part and a woman tumbles over the railing.
 
The victim is Zulietta Giardino, a mischievous courtesan involved with a young glass maker. Did a wager over a rival courtesan's jewels spell Zulietta's death? Or did the motive involve sinister events in the glass factories of Murano?

Tito faces troubles of a different sort at home. His upstanding neighbors regard his household as an immoral den of theatrical riffraff and disdain his wife, Liya, as an apostate Jew. While Liya attempts to reconcile with her disapproving family in the ghetto, Tito strives to be a good father to his adopted son.

On the night before the 2008 Army-Navy Game, a midshipman is found stark naked and barely alive in the lobby of a cheap motel near the Naval Academy.  The plebe's closest relatives are Ole and Lena Lindstrom, a pair of aging but still scrappy Wisconsin political activists who want lawyer Rep Pennyworth to help them get copyright protection for an audacious package of campaign ideas that put rich and ruthless gambling interests in the cross-hairs. The political neophyte they have in mind as a candidate heads a think-tank at UWM, where she is exploiting for her own political purposes the sensitive issue of domestic violence. 
 
Speaking of domestic violence, Ole and Lena have a well-earned reputation for trading punches with each other.  When Ole is murdered, Lena becomes a suspect.  Rep and Melissa are sure that more than coincidence ties the midshipman's mugging to Ole's murder in Milwaukee.  Along with their good friend, criminal lawyer Walt Kuchinski, they attack the mystery.

Publishers Weekly states that "The light tone and easy going dialogue make for a quick read."