On a sultry summer night Murray Whelan is in the Botanic Gardens tasting Salina Fleet's apricot lips. Meanwhile the body of an artist is being fished from the ornamental moat outside the gallery. The papers call it suicide. The police say it's an accident. Murray, political minder and art buff on the make, goes looking for the bigger picture. He finds that there is more than meets the eye among self-made millionaires, ruthless culture vultures, and cool operators of Melbourne's art world. He learns that when you dabble with death there's nothing abstract about a loaded gun.
