Amid the oppressive heat of a Bologna summer, English detective Daniel Leicester relives his beloved wife's final days. Vivid memories are awakened by the sight of her bicycle - missing since the accident that killed her - being ridden by a stranger through the city's tight medieval streets.

As unfinished business bleeds - quite literally - into the present, the sickening realisation Lucia's death wasn't an accident begins to dawn on Daniel. As he embarks on a quest for the truth, this most personal of crusades leads him to two very different worlds: the secretive, ancient realm of freemasonry he encountered during his first Bologna winter, and the 'Reclaim Bologna' activists he stumbles across this blistering summer. What links these contrasting 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?