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Author Pears's Book Reviews

An Instance of the Fingerpost
In 1663, an Oxford professor has been poisoned with arsenic -- that much is clear. But who did it and why is not. Four different narrators tell the same story and implicate four different killers. This strange story takes place against the historical backdrop of the English civil wars and restoration of King Charles II after the death of Cromwell. One of the narrators is Italian businessman and sort-of physician Marco da Cola; one is Jack Prestcott, a ma...
The Last Judgement
A painting is ordered by a man in Rome and art dealer Jonathon Argyll delivers it to him. The man views it and has a change of heart. He gives it back to Argyll to resell. The next day the art buyer is found murdered in his trashed apartment. As Argyll and his girlfriend, Flavia di Stephano, who is with the Italian Art Squad, are pushed into helping with the investigation, they are hampered by their French collegues when the search for the truth lead...
The Raphael Affair
English graduate student Jonathan Argyll has come to Rome because he believes his subject artist, a minor 18th century Italian painter named Mantini, may have painted over an early 16th century masterpiece by Raphael, so it could be sold and sent out of the country by an English buyer. Then Mantini painted a copy of the original. When the painting is tracked down and revealed, it sells at auction in Britain to the Italian government, which spends 10 m...
The Titian Committee
This is the second of Pears' art mystery series starring the clever government investigator, Flavia di Stefano of the Italian National Art Theft Squad, and British art historian/dealer Jonathan Argyll. When Louise Masterson, an American member of an international committee working on cataloguing the complete works of Renaissance Venetian painter Titian is found stabbed to death in Venice, Flavia is sent there as political window dressing on the investiga...