Salzburg in summer, besieged by crowds of tourists and festival guests. On the Jedermann stage in front of the cathedral lies a dead man. A prominent dead man. Death himself. Hans Dieter Hackner, the celebrated actor of Death in Hofmannsthal's Jedermann. A copy of a Renaissance dagger is lodged in his chest, and his shoes are missing from his feet. Too theatrical, thinks Commissioner Martin Merana, and begins his investigation in a world that is foreign to him: the world of the Salzburg Festival with its extroverted artists and puppet-mastering managers.