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1910. Halley's Comet is coming. Harry Houdini, the most celebrated escape artist in the world, has sold-out seasons in Australia. Houdini has a new obsession: aviation. He has brought with him from Europe his own Voisin biplane, being put together and prepared in a Diggers Rest paddock by his French mechanic Brassac. Houdini is intent on claiming a record: first to fly in Australia. But he has competition from aspiring aviators in several states, and is left restless and distracted when his promotional leap-in-chains from a Melbourne bridge disturbs a corpse in the Yarra. Meanwhile, his wife Bess, left alone in their hotel, stumbles upon her own mystery: music with no apparent source. Then she realises that her preoccupied husband is far from being the most famous visitor to Australia: an Italian composer has performed his own vanishing act . . .