Death of an Old Master: A Murder Mystery Featuring Lord Francis Powerscourt

In Death of an Old Master, it is Titian and a host of other Renaissance painters that command the attention of author David Dickinson and his discreet society investigator Lord Powerscourt. The celebrated 1899 exhibition of Venetian paintings has just opened in London when a leading art critic, Christopher Montague, is found murdered—garroted, to be precise—in his study. Powerscourt turns up a motive soon enough. For Montague would surely have closed the exhibition and rocked the London art world to its foundations, if he had published his article alleging that the work of the Old Masters on display (and on sale for fortunes in American dollars) were in fact brilliantly, and recently, executed forgeries. In search of his suspect, Powerscourt traverses a treacherous world of art dealers and picture restorers in London and on the continent before arriving in sun-baked, sinister Corsica.