Kirjahaku

First in the Italian art-history crime series featuring English dealer and sleuth Jonathan Argyll, from the author of the best-selling masterpiece 'An Instance of the Fingerpost'.

Witty Italian art-history crime series featuring English dealer Jonathan Argyll, from the author of the best-selling literary masterpiece, 'An Instance of the Fingerpost'. Membership of the prestigious Titian Committee is normally considered a high honour. Normally, that is, until two of its members end up dead and someone seems to be taking the idea of backstabbing a little too far. Flavia de Stefano of Rome's Art Theft Squad is sent to find out why. She calls upon the help of dealer Jonathan Argyll, in Venice to buy a picture from the Marchesa di Mulino. But the sudden theft of the Marchesa's collection sets Flavia and Jonathan on a tortuous trail to uncover the truth. A further death threatens the very survival of the Committee itself, as well as offering the tantalizing possibility of an undiscovered Titian – a mysterious composition that may have been suppressed for 'moral' reasons….

Clever Italian art-history crime series featuring scholar and dealer Jonathon Argyll, from the author of the best-selling masterpiece 'An Instance of the Fingerpost'.

Witty Italian art-history crime series featuring English dealer Jonathan Argyll, from the author of the best-selling literary masterpiece, ‘An Instance of the Fingerpost’. Paris can do strange things to a man's mind… like making him agree to an apparently harmless favour of escorting a picture to Rome. ‘The Death of Socrates’ is a particularly nondescript piece, so art dealer Jonathan Argyll can sympathize when its recipient refuses to accept delivery. But in an unusual twist, the same man is found dead a few hours later. Surely the painting wasn't that bad? Now caught up in a murder investigation, Jonathan recalls an attempt to steal the artwork while he was at the train station. Could this be the killer? The bodies start piling up and Jonathan must uncover the dark wartime secret at the heart of the mystery – before someone puts him out of the picture for good.

Clever and witty art history-mystery featuring scholar and sleuth Jonathon Argyll, from the author of the bestselling masterpiece ‘An Instance of the Fingerpost’. A tip-off without any names and a theft with no obvious motive – these are the apparently innocuous matters currently in the hands of Flavia di Stefano of Rome's Art Theft Squad. Flavia is able to disturb the looters of the monastery in San Giovanni but not catch them. And it's a good thing that nothing valuable was stolen because neither she nor art dealer Jonathan Argyll have a clue who the culprits were. Maybe the truth lies with the item they did get away with – not the disputed Caravaggio the monastery is known for, but a curious icon of the Madonna that is said to have strange powers. Such claims are pure folklore, surely… but then a connection is made to a French dealer found floating in the Tiber a few days later and suddenly things don't seem so frivolous. Perhaps the icon was what the thieves wanted – and is it possible that its powers are miraculous enough to kill for?

Clever and witty art history-mystery featuring Jonathon Argyll, scholar and sleuth, from the bestselling author of 'An Instance of the Fingerpost'.

Witty and clever art history-mystery featuring Jonathan Argyll, from the author of the bestselling masterpiece â??An Instance of the Fingerpostâ??.

A dark and disturbing novel of suspense, set at the turn of the 20th century, by the bestselling author of ââ?¬Ë?An Instance of the Fingerpostââ?¬â?¢.

This is the simplest tale in the world. Two people meet and fall in love. But the route which brought Larissa Salmina and Francis Haskell to a backstreet Venetian restaurant in 1962 was anything but straightforward.

A novel set in Provence at three different critical moments of Western Civilisation - the collapse of the Roman Empire in the fifth century, the Black Death in the fourteenth, and the Second World War in the twentieth. It follows the fortunes of three men, and each man's story is linked by the classical text that gives the book its title.

John Stone, a man so wealthy that in the years before World War One he was able to manipulate markets, industries and indeed whole countries and continents, has been found dead in mysterious circumstances.

'A fictional tour de force which combines erudition with mystery' PD JamesOxford in the 1660s. Sarah Blundy stands accused of the murder of Robert Grove, a fellow of New College.Four witnesses describe the events surrounding his death: Marco da Cola, a Venetian Catholic intent on claiming credit for the invention of blood transfusion; Jack Prescott, the son of a supposed traitor to the Royalist cause, determined to vindicate his father; John Wallis, chief cryptographer to both Cromwell and Charles II, a mathematician, theologian and master spy; and Anthony Wood, the famous Oxford antiquary.Each one tells their version of what happened but only one reveals the extraordinary truth. Brilliantly written and utterly convincing, An Instance of the Fingerpost is gripping from the first page to the last.'A novel that combines the simple pleasures of Agatha Christie with the intellectual subtlety of Umberto Eco, don't let it pass by unread.' The Times

At his London home, John Stone falls out of a window to his death. A financier and arms dealer, Stone was a man so wealthy that he was able to manipulate markets, industries, and indeed entire countries and continents. Did he jump, was he pushed, or was it merely a tragic accident? His alluring and enigmatic widow hires a young crime reporter to investigate. The story moves backward in time--from London in 1909 to Paris in 1890 and finally to Venice in 1867--and the attempts to uncover the truth play out against the backdrop of the evolution of high-stakes international finance, Europe's first great age of espionage, and the start of the twentieth century's arms race. Stone's Fall is a tale of love and frailty, as much as it is of high finance and skulduggery. The mixture, then, as now, is an often fatal combination.

"Deliciously literate" (Kirkus Reviews) and filled with "articulate characters and erudite art commentary" (The New York Times Book Review), this acclaimed series of novels by Iain Pears combines art and history, literature and mystery fiction, with the same passion for detail he displayed in his New York Times bestseller An Instance of the Fingerpost. In The Raphael Affair, the first book in the series, we are introduced to Jonathan Argyll, an enthusiastic young art scholar from England who has followed his suspicions about a long-lost Raphael painting to a small church in Rome. Not only is the painting in question gone from the site, it has been swiftly purchased, restored, auctioned, and installed in Rome's National Museum. But when the recovered Raphael is just as swiftly destroyed in a fire, Argyll begins to suspect its authenticity...and the innocence of every person in its path.

Iain Pears combines "articulate characters and erudite art commentary" (The New York Times Book Review) in this sophisticated, suspenseful series featuring art historian Jonathan Argyll and the delightfully clever Flavia di Stefano.In The Titian Committee, the two embark on a daring investigation after a member of a famous research committee is found dead in a Venetian public garden.

Hired to deliver a painting from a Parisian art dealer to a client in Rome, British art historian and amateur sleuth Jonathan Argyll suddenly finds himself caught up in a double murder and begins a probe that uncovers a secret hidden since World War II. Reprint.

Following a clue provided by a dying woman's confession, General Bottando of Rome's Art Theft Squad sets off on a world-wide search for the man he calls Giotto, whom he believes is responsible for a series of major heists. Reprint.

The monastery of San Giovanni on Rome's Aventine Hill has no real treasures, except for one huge and disturbing painting, dubiously attributed to Caravaggio, of the breaking of Saint Catherine on the wheel. It's not a subject likely to appeal to many buyers of stolen art. But a Caravaggio is a Caravaggio - or is it? Following a recent burglary at the monastery's chapel, there's little left to steal, so Flavia di Stefano of Rome's Art Theft Squad is particularly puzzled when she receives a tip that thieves plan to raid the building. What is there, except perhaps the Caravaggio, that professionals could covet? Even stranger is the sudden arrival in Italy of Mary Verney, an Englishwoman and thief whom Flavia and her art-expert fiance, Jonathan Argyll, have encountered before. She may be there as a tourist, but it's unlikely. Is Mary after personal riches, or is her trip, and her possible involvement in a theft, inspired by more terrifying circumstances? Something strange and threatening is occurring both inside and outside the monastery, and Jonathan and Flavia feel powerless when they fail either to stop a theft or a murder. As the two search for answers through the maze of monastic and police bureaucracy, they gradually reveal a surprise more shocking than even they had imagined.

After British art historian Jonathan Argyll sells a minor masterpiece to an American museum for an exorbitant price, the museum's owner is murdered, a disreputable art dealer disappears with a Bernini bust, and Argyll discovers his life is in danger. Reprint.