A witty, atmospheric Victorian cozy mystery featuring an intrepid lady sleuth, her devoted duke, and a psychic Pomeranian, as a patriarch's murder pulls them into the candlelit secrets‑and ghosts‑of Venice.
When the formidable patriarch of the Barbaro family is found murdered in his palazzo, suspicion settles on his grown children, each nursing a grievance hidden beneath the family's polished façade. But there's another suspect Flora Flowerdew can't dismiss: Rose, her old friend and the dead man's beautiful young second wife, who claims innocence yet is plainly hiding something.
Flora doesn't investigate alone. Benedict, the Duke of Everton, is never far‑his growing place in her heart nearly as unsettling as the case‑nor is Chou Chou, her uncannily psychic Pomeranian, who seems to know far more about the sinister palazzo than any dog should.
As they follow the trail through shadowed canals and the misty labyrinth of Venice, they unearth a darker history the Barbaros have buried deep‑one someone, or something, is determined to drag into the light. Then the ghosts begin to appear.
Flora Flowerdew
FLORA FLOWERDEW & THE MYSTERY OF THE DUKEβS DIAMONDS
© 2003-2026