Sudden death lurks along the canals of Venice.

That's what Don Micklem, millionaire American playboy on the trail of a disappearing one-time British agent, discovered the hard way. Had his quarry been murdered - or had he committed treason?

Micklem's adventures, his fight against a ruthless political organisation and his narrow escapes from violent death, all set against a taut background of Venice's sinister waterways, make a deep-freeze chiller of a book.