When Norm Cooper, the straightlaced new dean of Canon Flubert, turns up dead, Robert Amiss and the Baroness find themselves investigating radical gay priests, feminist witches, and evil cult members, who all had much to gain from Norm Cooper's demise.
In Venice, Frances Croy is working to leave the previous year behind: another novel published to little success, a scathing review she can't quite manage to forget, and, most of all, the real reason behind her self-imposed exile from London: the incident at the Savoy. Sequestered within an aging palazzo, Frankie finds comfort in the emptiness of Venice in winter, in the absence of others. And then Gilly appears.