A conflict of good and evil, between saint and sinner buried beneath mountains of feathers, lace, and needlepoint. The Modern Sinner opens with a crime that will haunt the narrative and its characters beyond the last page. Invernizio was among the first to create the aristocratic femme fatale. The worldly seductress named Sultana plays with men, bewitching them onto paths of dissolution and betrayal. And Invernizio's men are too frail to escape her or too unaware to notice her deviousness. Husbands and lovers become victims and pawns to her charms. There are no pure characters. As Sultana's arch-nemesis, Invernizio invents a vengeance-seeking country girl, Anna Maria, who weaves a web to entrap her prey - a web dangerous for herself as well as for everyone else involved. One of the earliest examples of the serialized female crime novel, The Modern Sinner is a masterpiece of the genre. Its twists and turns entrance from chapter to chapter as the reader follows the shifting fates of two women engaged in mortal combat, each one hiding her calculations and objectives.