'Only in Bologna' reads the headline in the Carlino after a professor of music is apparently murdered leaving the opera. But what looks like an open-and-shut case begins to fall apart when English detective Daniel Leicester is tasked with proving the accused man's innocence, and a trail that begins among Bologna's close-knit classical music community leads him to suspect there may be a serial killer at large in the oldest university in the world. And as Bologna trembles with aftershocks following a recent earthquake, the city begins to give up her secrets.