This work 'is a foray into the crime fiction genre, although the book has broader social and historical themes. The book's hero, Jack Martin (born Giacomo Martinuzzi) is an unusual copper. While, like many real life and fictional detectives, he drinks, eats and smokes too much, he has a decided intellectual bent. He reads books about such things as the Renaissance, prompting his wife to opine that most of the other policemen she knows would think this was "a horse at Caulfield or something"' (Abstract supplied by the author).
