True-crime writers Peter Marsh and his daughter, Georgia, are at a wedding when Georgia steps into the church's graveyard, sees a headstone marked "Lance Venyon, Lost at Sea, 1961," and feels that intuitive frisson that signals the kind of sleuthing challenge that often leads to a new book. Who was Lance Venyon, and what tragic chain of events led to his death at sea? Following a few tenuous leads, Peter and Georgia uncover tentative evidence that Venyon was murdered. The case takes them from fifth-century Saxon England to 1950s Paris, from Budapest to a muddy field in Kent, and deep into the dark but fascinating world of art theft and forgery.