A young art historian pursuing academic success. A painting by the most famous eighteenth-century painter of vedute, Canaletto. A gondola once possibly belonging to the poet Robert Browning - and who else before him? These are the key elements of the novel. When Jeremy Allyn is assigned Canaletto's Vedute by his teacher as the topic for his dissertation - a subject many have already written about - he realizes he must find an original perspective. He therefore decides to focus on Canaletto's figures, a secondary feature of his celebrated architectural scenes. This marks the beginning of an adventure with unexpected turns that will lead Jeremy to make some astonishing discoveries and to uncover a crime which had remained buried for centuries.