Esther Brookstone Art Detective

Esther Brookstone's life is at a crossroads. A Scotland Yard inspector who specializes in stolen art, she's reluctantly considering retirement. A three-time widow, she can't quite decide whether paramour and colleague Interpol Agent Bastiann van Coevorden should be husband number four. Decisions are put on hold while she and Bastiann set out to thwart a neo-Nazi conspiracy financed in part by artworks stolen during World War II. Among the stolen art is the masterpiece "An Angel with Titus' Features," a work Esther obsesses about recovering. The case sends the intrepid pair on an international hunt spanning several European countries and the Amazon jungle. Evading capture and thwarting death, Esther and Bastiann prove time and again that adrenaline-spiked adventures aren't just for the young.

Esther Brookstone is at it again, this time obsessing about the life and times, of St. John the Divine, all triggered by the discovery of a parchment hidden in the frame of a Botticelli painting that she authenticates. As in Rembrandt's Angel, she soon gets into trouble, and her paramour, Interpol agent Bastiann van Coevorden, again comes to her aid. A race to find the saint's tomb results, because Esther has competition. Three centuries of action involving the saint, the Renaissance artist Sandro Botticelli, and Esther and Bastiann, make this sequel a book of mystery, thrills, and suspense that will keep readers guessing.

Trouble again finds Esther Brookstone on her home turf. An old friend from her Oxford days is developing encoding and decoding algorithms that involve entangled quantum states and quantum computers, all motivated by some of Leonardo Da Vinci's ideas found in a newly discovered notebook of the artist. His project is financed by MI5, but both the Americans and Russians want his results...and so does a mysterious stranger. Cloak-and-dagger suspense abound in this fifth novel of the series.