Retired art history professor Megan Crespi, an expert on the Expressionist artist Egon Schiele, is called to Vienna to help solve the brutal murder of a museum night watchman whose naked cadaver was propped up in the same pose as the nude self-portrait by Schiele above him. A series of attacks relating to Schiele occur, ranging from "censoring" of his nude figures' private parts with spray paint to desecration of his burial site. Amid restitution lawsuits and murderous competing gallery owners, Megan's investigations are endangered by the fanatical Grand Master of a secret sect dedicated to the obliteration of obscenity. Her own life in danger, the twisting Schiele trail leaves multiple corpses in its wake and leads Megan from conniving Vienna to remote Kaliningrad in Russia, to ancient Krumau in Bohemia, and bustling Milan in Italy as she hunts for a possible hidden trove of major Schiele paintings. What she discovers is undreamt of and leaves the Schiele world stunned and covetous.
