Dublin, the French country-side, Paris, Verona and Prague are some of the colourful backgrounds for this book. The adventure takes Paul and Alice, an attractive insurance investigator who has joined him, on a whirlwind tour of Europe. Dragged from the comfort and routine of life in the little antique shop in Dublin, he struggles to come to terms with some of the people he encounters. The break-in at their shop resulted in the disappearance of his employer and the theft of an innocuous portrait of a young girl. Benjamin Zabel was a benevolent old soul who’d taken Paul under his wing with a view to educating him in the ways of an antique dealer. When he vanished Paul was distraught, he knew the authorities would quickly drop the case, they had too many serious gangland crimes to deal with.
Nazi war criminals and the Russian mafia barred his way as he tries to find the old man and make some sense of the rumours that follow the painting. Could it really be the missing masterpiece these ruthless parties believe it to be?
The closer he gets to the truth the more he realises it has strong links with his own past and of Benjamin’s. Alice, a welcome ally in this mad chase, turns to have an agenda of her own.
Confounded by the complexity of it all and the ease with which people around him can deceive and lie he steels himself for an epic showdown on a grand stage.