From Publishers Weekly
This playful satire of the squabbling international art scene and the Italian police bureaucracy reunites volcanic beauty Flavia de Stefano of the Italian National Art Theft Squad, and diffident British art dealer Jonathan Argyll, who first met in The Raphael Affair. Set in Venice and first published by Gollancz in 1991, the tale opens with the murder of American art historian Louise Masterson, a member of the scholarly international Titian Committee, who is found stabbed to death in a bed of lilies at the Giardinetti Reali. Then the elegant, reputedly incorruptible British art collector Tony Roberts drowns in a canal, and French art philosopher Georges Bralle is discovered suffocated in his home in France. Affection blooms between Flavia and Jonathan as they probe current affairs and Titian's paintings for clues to the killings and the answer to a question about the painter's life. Pears, who has a doctorate in art history from Cambridge, writes with a Beerbohm-like wit. Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
This second title in a series maintains the high standards of the first ( The Raphael Affair , Harcourt, 1992), once again appealing to art history buffs. When a murderer strikes down an American member of the prestigious Titian Committee in Venice, General Taddeo Bottando of Rome's art-theft squad dispatches special assistant Flavia to gather information. What begins as a simple political mission becomes a dangerous quest for a missing portrait attributed to Titian. Enlisting the aid of art dealer Jonathan Argyll, Flavia never hesitates to call a spade a spade, but she tempers her judgment with theory. Most enjoyable.Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Kirkus Reviews
Flavia di Stefano, junior investigator for the Polizia Art Squad of Rome, has been sent to Venice to assist (actually, to inoffensively not assist) the local carabinieri looking into the murder of American art historian Louise Masterson; Jonathan Argyll, the gawky British dealer's representative Flavia arrested in The Raphael Affair (1992), has come to Venice to negotiate for a mediocre painting with the Marchesa di Mulino, who suddenly turns skittish. The two cases cross with the news that Masterson's committee to authenticate all known works of Titian had run aground on serious disagreements (how serious? Two more committee members will soon be found dead) and that Masterson herself had developed a mysterious interest in the canvas Jonathan was trying to buy--part of the inheritance of the Marchesa's nephew Dr. Lorenzo, another member of the ill-starred Titian committee. As before, literate and cultivated, with a 20's (1520's) cast, and a particularly clever historical analogy saved for dessert. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Book Description
From New York Times bestselling author Iain Pears...

Flavia di Stefano of Rome's Art Theft Squad and art historian Jonathan Argyll have charmed mystery readers around the world. Their latest case is baffling to the extreme, when clues from a Titian researcher's death by mugging point to murder--and a criminal conspiracy...

"[An] elegant mystery...but the real work of art here is the plot, a piece of structural engineering any artist would envy."--New York Times

"Light and sassy...Agatha would have loved it." --Los Angeles Times

* Iain Pears is the author of the highly acclaimed New York Times bestseller An Instance of the Fingerpost

FROM THE PUBLISHER