It is one week before Easter, 1932. At the high-class brothel known as Paradiso, Viper, the most famous prostitute of all, is found dead, suffocated with a pillow. Her last client swears that when he left her she was alive and well. But when the following client arrived, he found her dead. Who killed her, and why? Commissario Ricciardi has to untangle a complex knot of greed, frustration, and jealousy in order to solve the riddle of Viper's death. But his investigation is scuttled at every corner by the conflicting emotions stirring under the surface of the city.