"Art restorer and legendary spy Gabriel Allon has slipped quietly into London to attend a reception at the Courtauld Gallery celebrating the return of a stolen self-portrait by Vincent van Gogh. But when an old friend from the Devon and Cornwall Police seeks his help with a baffling murder investigation, he finds himself pursuing a powerful and dangerous new adversary. The victim is Charlotte Blake, a celebrated professor of art history from Oxford...

Cool, no-nonsense private detective Joe Mannix is a tough-talking loner within the large detective agency Intertect. He has street smarts and class, but he constantly fights with his boss, Lew Wickersham, over how to conduct their investigations. Lew relies on the company's computers, but Mannix has to go with his gut-- and that's just what he does every time.