The City of Falling Angels by John Berendt

"In the course of his investigations, Berendt encounters a rich cast of characters: a hard-as-nails prosecutor who blushes when he's angered; a prominent Venetian poet whose shocking "suicide" prompts his friends to pursue a murder suspect on their own; the First Family of American expatriates facing the loss of their palace on the Grand Canal after four generations of ownership; an organization of party-going, high-society Americans busily raising money to preserve the art and architecture of Venice, while quarreling among themselves, questioning each other's motives, and drawing startled Venetians into the fray; a contemporary Venetian surrealist painter known locally as an outrageous prankster and provocateur; a twenty-first-generation master glassblower whose sons are locked in a dynastic war; and numerous others - pigeon trappers, scapegoats, hustlers, sleepwalkers, a believer in Martians, the Plant Man, the Rat Man of Treviso, and Henry James."--BOOK JACKET.