The sensualist - Barbara Hodgson

On a night train from Munich to Vienna, Helen Martin discovers, quite literally, that she is losing her senses. Sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste - all are disappearing, and her own body parts are taking on unfamiliar characteristics. The author of The Tattooed Map has created a mystery cum love story with a brain that weaves together the unseemly history of anatomical art with a gruesome modern-day murder. A visual and literary sortie into the realm of the body, The Sensualist is a potent mystery about the limitations of looking and the boundless power of seeing. Helen's search takes her through the capitals of Europe and from the sixteenth century to the Second World War to last winter. But her real journey lies within, as each of her five senses comes alive with catastrophic acuity. A deftly woven conundrum of art forgery, thievery, and connoisseurship, The Sensualist is also the chronicle of a ruinous love affair and the history of a lost body.