The immaculate deception

When an important, politically sensitive, painting is kidnapped in Rome, life takes a downward turn for Flavia di Stefano, acting head of the Italian Art Theft Squad. Things start badly when Flavia is told to get the painting back at all costs without causing any embarrassment to the country and without paying a ransom. Put in an impossible position, she turns for help to her old mentor General Taddeo Bottando, who is able to cast a wholly unexpected light on the crime. Flavia herself wonders if the subject of the painting, a classical landscape by Claude Lorraine, might be significant. In the meantime, her husband, the English art historian Jonathan Argyll, embarks on an investigation of his own. As a gift to Bottando, he decides to establish the provenance of a small Renaissance painting, an Immaculate Conception, currently hanging on the wall of the general's apartment. For both Argyll and Flavia, the search for the truth reveals shocking secrets from the past and leads them straight into the path of some very dangerous enemies indeed. The Immaculate Deception is an absorbing, witty and ingeniously plotted novel, combining a gripping murder mystery with a fascinating art-history puzzle.