At a seance in a Cambridge backstreet, Dr. Nathaniel Gye is commissioned by a dead man to find his killer. Naturally, he dismisses the incident from his mind as a clumsy fraud by a fake medium. It is only when Nathaniel's wife, Kathryn, disappears during a trip to Italy - an eventuality also foretold by the unquiet spirit - that he is forced to look for connections between her predicament and the violent death of a security guard she never knew. The urgent search for answers takes Nathaniel far from his quiet university existence and into a labyrinth of hazardous twists and turns involving a stolen Renaissance painting and the love life of Robert and Elizabeth Browning.The intricate puzzles of this case plunge Nathaniel even deeper into the web of deception. Just how can a work of art disappear from a locked van? Can the dead speak to the living? When is a fake not a fake? Should justice for the murdered be sought at the cost of misery for those left alive? And what is the enigmatic nature of rare things? All these strange questions must be answered before the truth can be revealed. Read Less