The Titian Committee
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Witty Italian art-history crime series featuring English dealer Jonathan Argyll, from the author of the best-selling literary masterpiece, 'An Instance of the Fingerpost'.
Membership of the prestigious Titian Committee is normally considered a high honour. Normally, that is, until two of its members end up dead and someone seems to be taking the idea of backstabbing a little too far.
Flavia de Stefano of Rome's Art Theft Squad is sent to find out why. She calls upon the help of dealer Jonathan Argyll, in Venice to buy a picture from the Marchesa di Mulino. But the sudden theft of the Marchesa's collection sets Flavia and Jonathan on a tortuous trail to uncover the truth.
A further death threatens the very survival of the Committee itself, as well as offering the tantalizing possibility of an undiscovered Titian – a mysterious composition that may have been suppressed for 'moral' reasons….
Reviews
Praise for ‘The Titian Committee’:
‘An elegant and amusing book, perfect for those who love a clever puzzle.’ Mail on Sunday
‘The real work of art here is the plot, a piece of structural engineering any artist would envy.’ New York Times
Praise for the Jonathan Argyll series:
'Iain Pears has a superior line in this kind of tale…a divertingly complex, often comic, story in which the art motif is ingeniously central to the solution.' Guardian
'Superior entertainment.' Allan Massie, Scotsman
'There is nothing so satisfactory as the deconstruction of a puzzle in the hands of such an erudite and sure-footed author.' The Times
'Pears is a delightful writer, with a light, ironic touch.' Frances Fyfield, Mail on Sunday
'Iain Pears writes delightfully witty, elegant, well-informed crime novels.' The Times
'You don't have to know much about art to enjoy Iain Pears's Italian mysteries. Like a good teacher, he shares his passion unobtrusively and flavours his lessons with wit.' Val McDermid
'Pears is a delightful writer, with a light, ironic touch.' Mail on Sunday
About the author
Iain Pears won the Getty Scholarship to Yale University and worked for Reuters in Rome. He is the author of the bestseller ‘An Instance of the Fingerpost’. He lives with his wife and son in Oxford.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This playful satire of the squabbling international art scene and the Italian police bureaucracy reunites volcanic beauty Flavia de Stefano of the Italian National Art Theft Squad, and diffident British art dealer Jonathan Argyll, who first met in The Raphael Affair. Set in Venice and first published by Gollancz in 1991, the tale opens with the murder of American art historian Louise Masterson, a member of the scholarly international Titian Committee, who is found stabbed to death in a bed of lilies at the Giardinetti Reali. Then the elegant, reputedly incorruptible British art collector Tony Roberts drowns in a canal, and French art philosopher Georges Bralle is discovered suffocated in his home in France. Affection blooms between Flavia and Jonathan as they probe current affairs and Titian's paintings for clues to the killings and the answer to a question about the painter's life. Pears, who has a doctorate in art history from Cambridge, writes with a Beerbohm-like wit.
