Detective Commissario Guido Brunetti has been called to investigate a parent's worst nightmare. A young cadet has been found hanged, a presumed suicide, in Venice's elite military academy. Brunetti's sorrow for the boy, so close in age to his own son, is rivaled only by his contempt for a community that is more concerned with protecting the reputation of the school, and its privileged students, than understanding this tragedy. The young man is the...

"Follows an unlikely group of young cadets forced to mutiny aboard the revolutionary Devastation Class starship U.A.S. California to save themselves from an annihilation force of invading aliens"-- Earth's Alliance forces have emerged victorious from a brutal nine-year war with the Kastazi, a vicious, highly advanced alien race. In the dawn of a new peace, the Alliance Devastation Class starship California embarks on a mission of science and learning...