***Only players on a stage.*** Thaddeus worked his way to the top of his profession. As an inquisitor to the Doge, he enjoyed all the comforts middle-classed Venice had to offer. That is until he was saddled with the sniveling scribe from Padua, Geovanni. Now his life had taken a turn for the bizarre. Given the impossible task of discovering the source of a strange plague, the inquisitor and scribe have been banished from Venice until a resolution is ferreted out. Strangeness stalks the land, and it isn’t the Turks. The pair’s first task is to reach the infected town of Udine intact. Will they be able to find the source, and return? Will they survive? Read the first book *Inquisitor,* in the Thaddeus of Venice trilogy, to find out.