The Search for the Etruscan Venus

        The Etruscan Venus, if she were wearing a blouse had every right to pin on it the Purple Heart or British Army equivalent. But like her compatriot the Venus de Milo she sported neither a blouse nor even BVDs.

        The most famous statue in all she was also one of the best preserved, lacking only the fifth finger of her left hand from being totally intact. That is except for the wound. It seems a twelfth century halberdier, unmindful of the finer things in life, had shot her in the left buttock leaving a dimple. The act was further proof of his heedlessness and that he had no respect for womankind or for the elderly, for at that time she was thought to be at least four hundred years old.

        Among her many adventures the latest was in 1943 when a German Wermacht truck backed up the door of the museum where she was residing and carted her away never to be seen again.

        Lieutenant, Captain, Major, (depending on his latest success or his latest disrespectful encounter with higher authority) Peter Lindley was assigned by Reparations Nato to find her.

        In the process he gains an education in Italian oubliettes, Italian women, Italian high and low society, and Italian counterfeit money. And he learns more about the owner of the Venus, the Marquessa Monte de Feo, than he cares to know. He finds that she is beautiful but already married and so quite out of bounds to any of his several desires.

        In truly British fashion, although he is an American expatriate, he muddles through to a happy ending.

All characters, events, backgrounds, opinions and geography are happily fictional.