On a late Saturday in April, the venerable Roman church of San Tommaso in Pallaria became the site of a most curious assemblage. A superannuated jet-setter and her junkie nephew, a bad-tempered, ultra-British Major, a boisterous Baron and Baroness bearing an astonishing resemblance to one another, and an extremely reticent best-selling author were being gathered together under the aegis of one Sebastian Mailer and his Il Cicerone Conducted Tours for an expedition that he promised would be "most unconventional." Which indeed it would be. All sorts of new activities, plus some surprises. Like murder, blackmail, and drug-running. superintendent Roderick Alleyn, brought to Italy by an international probe of drug smuggling, finds himself in the middle of the most baffling case of his career, an intricate web of "Anybody's Guess" in which each and every one of his suspects could be a killer-or a victim. Or both.