The Bernini bust - Iain Pears

Clever Italian art-history crime series featuring scholar and dealer Jonathon Argyll, from the author of the best-selling masterpiece 'An Instance of the Fingerpost'.

The hardest part of being an art dealer is having to sell your beloved works. For Jonathan Argyll, the pain is soothed when an American billionaire agrees to pay a vast sum for a relatively minor piece.

Arriving in the Californian sunshine eager to collect his cheque, Jonathan bumps into one of his less scrupulous colleagues, and discovers he is not the American's only seller. A bust of Pope Pius V is being smuggled out of Italy, and trouble is following in its wake.

Within hours, Jonathan's billionaire is dead and both the smuggler and his bust have gone missing. Thinking things can't get any worse, Jonathan calls for the help of the Italian Art Theft Squad - and instead finds himself the killer's next target.