Franki Amato is in Venice to celebrate her best friend's Christmas Eve nuptials. She's looking forward to a relaxing break from the PI grind and a romantic gondola ride with her Casanova. But when a chef goes belly up after making violet risotto for the reception, her holiday plans start sinking like La Serenissima. Dead set on finding the killer and saving her BFF's wedding, Franki navigates the city's streets and canals that are darker and more twisted than catacomb tunnels, and all while ghosts of past and present are quite literally haunting her. She has to figure out what grave robberies and an eighteenth-century nun have to do with the murder and decipher a string of clues as murky as the Venetian lagoon-a candlelit coffin, a jeweled cross necklace, and a bottle of Valpolicella. Will Franki get her gondola ride? Or will she too become a phantom of Venice?