It is November 2nd, 2017. All Souls Day. On the Day of the Dead, the citizens of Venice make their way to the cemetery island of San Michele to pay their respects to the departed.

When an empty coffin is unearthed in the English section of the graveyard, a day of quiet reflection for Nathan Sutherland becomes a journey into the dark past of a noble Venetian family. A British journalist, investigating the events of forty years previously, disappears. A young tourist - with an unhealthy interest in Venice's abandoned islands - is found drowned in the icy lagoon.

A terrible secret is about to be brought to light, and a deadly reckoning awaits on Venice's Isle of the Dead.