A celebrated comic book author suffers a mysterious death. His widow, Lilli Kuck, spontaneously travels to the site of his accident in Venice and traces entries in her husband's notebook, following his routes and trying to meet with people he encountered during his final days. Her sleuthing uncovers several of her late-husband's secrets, forcing Lilli to question how well she had really known her life's companion. She also witnesses the killing of a policeman and herself becomes a target for murder. In the end, her journey to Venice becomes a journey to herself, confronting the very riddles of life itself.Author Gerhard Roth was born in Graz in 1942, the son of a medical doctor and a nurse. He originally intended to study medicine, but soon discontinued his studies. For ten years Roth worked as a computer programmer to support his growing family, but since the mid-1970s he has been exclusively a writer. His major works consist of a cycle of seven novels, Die Archive des Schweigens (The Archives of Silence), and another novel cycle, Orkus (Hades). His work has earned extensive critical acclaim over the years, including the Doeblin Prize (1983), the Kreisky Prize (2002), and the Grand Austrian State Prize (2016), among many others.