Set in Venice in 1908, Jakeman's second novel to feature Claude Monet (after 2005's In the Kingdom of Mists
) offers a complex and shadowy plot in the tradition of Daphne du Maurier's Don't Look Now
. Revel Callender, an English attorney taking a year off before settling down in his profession, is hired by Count Roberto Casimiri to look through the papers of a recently deceased relative born into a wealthy Anglo-Irish banking family. Soon after the count dies under bizarre circumstances, Callender travels to Paris at Monet's request to monitor the investigation of the murder of the painter's brother-in-law, which occurred several months earlier. Callender finds unusual parallels between the two killings and a 16th-century Italian scandal. With impeccable pacing and prose, Jakeman sweeps the reader into the conflict between the decadent world of the old Venetian aristocracy and the new age of a unified Italy rebuilt with American money, though be prepared for unlikable characters, incest and torture. (May)
