"It was a bizarre and beautiful invasion. Suddenly, from nowhere, the Foreigners were everywhere: walking the streets of 21st century earth as if they had been there all along; their inscrutable golden masks floating above the crowds on top of their seven foot robe clad bodies. They brought with them the technological marvel of Crystech, at once a power source and a building material of unearthly beauty. They banished all our worries and heralded a new utopia. All they asked of us was that we sing to them. It was surely too good to be true. The only thing that could possibly go wrong was that one day they might leave, as suddenly and mysteriously as they had arrived, throwing us back into the dark ages." "And now, in a room in one of the hotels on the gleaming white streets of New Venice, one of the Foreigners has been found dead, its robes and mask lying empty on the plush carpet next to the body of the Siren it had paid to sing to it." "An accident? A bizarre cross species suicide pact? Murder?" "Jack Parry, late of the Metropolitan police, now of the Foreign Policy Police is under pressure to find out what happened before news gets out to the public, or before it happens again and the Foreigners go, giving us back disharmony and, perhaps, freedom."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved