Tonio agrees to write a love letter for Dario, a low-rent Paris gigolo. When Dario is murdered, Tonio finds his friend has left him a small vineyard east of Naples, which is the front for an elaborate scam that attracts the unwanted attentions of both the Mafia and the Vatican.

A literary novel of 1819 London and Venice: a successful Gothic novelist battles with psychological dependency and suffers the complexity of obsession.