Andrea Molesini chooses the path of the historical novel to tell of murky family relationships and criminal entanglements, inviting the reader to explore the past to interrogate the present.

Venice. In San Marco's most renowned café, an elegant old lady meets the lawyer Ridolfi, a young man with a shrewd manner, although some details of his attire denounce little professional affirmation. The lady is a very wealthy widow and equally cynical, indifferent to the sirens of conformity. An agreement is struck between the two. Rita, the widow's niece, and Enrico, a career surgeon, are on their honeymoon in Rhodes, then Italian: this is 1938, in the days of the Treaty of Munich. They are approached by a self-styled general named Costantini, who informs Rita of her grandmother's sudden death, saying he married her shortly before she passed away and handing her granddaughter a will making her sole heir to an immense fortune. 

But the will includes a catch-all clause, wherein creeps lawyer Ridolfi, who makes his appearance in Rhodes with a proposal as ambiguous as it is threatening. Between the four of them, against the mundane and corrupt backdrop of the Levantine island, a carousel of moves and countermoves begins, including blackmail and a looming murder-a game in which one man alone could win it all. The mystery from Rhodes finally returns to Venice, where the characters, staged with humorous and at times satirical flair, will lead him to a solution. In this book, too, Andrea Molesini - author of Non tutti i bastardi sono di Vienna and Il rogo della Repubblica - chooses the path of the historical novel to recount murky family relationships and criminal entanglements, inviting the reader to explore the past in order to interrogate the present.