She’s Mariel Imari, of Italian and Japanese descent, whose skill at disguise comes from being part of a famous dynasty of detectives. She’s even done an internship at Scotland Yard, where she solved 18 murders in three months! So why is her office on the canal bank, and her residence a hovel full of stray cats? Why doesn’t she get to live in her family’s ancestral Venetian mansion…instead of getting kicked out of it every morning by her butler, once she’s finished breakfast?

It’s because Mariel hasn’t yet cracked the one case that would allow her to inherit her grandfather’s estate—Forget-me-not, the painting stolen from the mansion 22 years ago, which she needs to recover as a condition of his will. You see, Mariel is brilliant, but Mariel is also a bit lazy and slovenly and bored…and about to be a bit embarrassed, too when her sisters show up from Japan, under the impression that Mariel is rich!