When Algy Temple, pool player, sleuth and Ivy League university lawyer, investigates the highly suspicious death of a retired university don, his contemporaneous involvement in a high stakes pool tournament in Providence becomes a tiresome, contentious obligation that must be endured. As he delves into the life of the deceased, he unexpectedly finds himself on a path that leads him to Rome, the vendetta-ridden Boot of Italy and into a haunted past of corruption and conspiracy with a linkage to the tournament, gambling, shylocks, and mobsters unexpected even in Providence where old world shadows hang heavy in the air. Add an abduction, a Ponzi, an outraged Italo-American community locked in a culture war with the University, a hustler's last gambit for recognition, and a fiancé focused on their wedding in two weeks, his investigation becomes a match of wits with a dead man, and a pool wager of life and death.