A Brush With Shadows

On Phillip Island, art restorer Leroy Cunningworth has learned that every masterpiece hides a history - layers of truth buried beneath time, damage, and deliberate deceit.When a former financial archivist is quietly murdered in Munich, and a string of seemingly unrelated global incidents begins to surface-a suspicious political fire in Washington, a stadium shooting in Berlin-Leroy senses a pattern others have missed. Not chaos. Composition.At the urging of Inspector Jack Flint, Leroy travels to Vienna to protect an investigative journalist digging into whispers of Aktion Phoenix-a shadow network that appears less like a political movement and more like a corporate machine manipulating global power.With Sheila tracing digital money trails, Homer supplying logistical intelligence, and Jack operating from the margins of European intelligence circles, Leroy must piece together a conspiracy designed to rewrite economic and political order-before its architects erase the last witnesses.As in art, the danger lies not in what is visible - but in what has been carefully overpainted.A Brush With Shadows is a stylish, international crime novella blending art restoration, espionage, political intrigue, and moral tension-another standalone case in the Leroy Cunningworth Novella Series.