Eleanor Finch and Naomi Price travel to Venice to organize the first public exhibition of a centuries-old private collection at Palazzo Venturi.
But the palazzo's faded frescoes, handwritten inventories and quiet galleries soon become more intriguing than the event itself.
An inventory from 1732 records forty-seven paintings.
Two years later, there are forty-eight.
The mysterious new entry is titled:
The Woman at the Window.
The painting appears to be missing.
Then another portrait disappears, leaving behind only a green Murano glass bead.
Eleanor and Naomi are drawn into a centuries-old trail of false attributions, suppressed restoration records and family secrets — one that leads to a forgotten painter, Isabella Venturi, and her model, Lucia Moretti.
But the most important question is not who stole a painting.
It is who believed they had the right to decide when the truth should be revealed.
Atmospheric Venice, dry humour, art-historical intrigue and a character-driven mystery with no murder make this a warm, elegant cosy mystery.