IAIN PEARS

JONATHAN ARGYLL SERIES THE RAPHAEL AFFAIR This is the first of a series of highly knowledgeable detective novels by an art historian about the art world. Set in Rome, it features the perpetually beset General Bottando of the Italian National Art Theft Squad; his glamorous assistant, Flavia di Stefano; and Jonathan Argyll, a British art historian. When Jonathan is arrested for breaking into an obscure church in Rome, he claims that it contains a long-lost Raphael hidden under a painting by Mantini. Further investigation reveals that the painting has disappeared. Then it miraculously reappears in the hands of the top British art dealer, Edward Byrnes. How has Byrnes found out about the hidden masterpiece, and whom is he acting for? There is also the curious matter of the safety-deposit box full of sketches closely resembling certain features of the newly discovered painting. A hideous act of vandalism occurs, then murder. Bottando faces the most critical challenge of his career, and Jonathan and Flavia find themselves in unexpected physical danger.   THE TITIAN COMMITTEE As deaths go, art dealer Jonathan Argyll has seen better - the last moments of Socrates, as rendered by a mediocre eighteenth-century artist, seems an unlikely painting to attract much attention. But it has found a buyer, an affluent businessman living in Jonathan's adopted city of Rome. In an exchange of favors with an art dealer colleague, Jonathan unluckily offers to transport the Death of Socrates from Paris back to Rome. The assignment seems routine enough. The Parisian art dealer will package the painting and arrange the paperwork. All Jonathan must do is carry it to its final destination. And, of course, he will then be reunited with his girlfriend, Flavia di Stefano, who just happens to work for Rome's Art Theft Squad. It sounds like a fine plan, until things start to go wrong. Jonathan begins to realize that everything is not as it should be when a stranger approaches him at the train station and attempts to run off with the painting. Why would anybody go to such risk for a relatively unimportant piece of art? The answer becomes no clearer when Jonathan finally delivers his precious parcel to Arthur Muller, its new owner in Rome. After an initial inspection of the artwork, Muller seems distinctly less interested than the would-be thief, even asking Jonathan to arrange a sale to a new buyer. But if Muller doesn't want to keep the painting, somebody else desperately wants it. As events soon prove, somebody will even kill to possess it.   THE BERNINI BUST British art historian Jonathan Argyll has just sold a minor Titian to an American museum for a highly inflated price. But as he complacently awaits his check in the California sunshine, trouble erupts: the museum's billionaire owner is murdered, a dubious art dealer disappears, and a Bernini bust, apparently smuggled out of Italy, is missing. This calls for help from his friends General Bottando and Flavia di Stefano of the Italian National Art Theft Squad...especially when the killer's attention turns toward Argyll. Cleverly mixing murder with art, Iain Pears has written his strongest and most entertaining mystery to date.   THE LAST JUDGEMENT As deaths go, art dealer Jonathan Argyll has seen better - the last moments of Socrates, as rendered by a mediocre eighteenth-century artist, seems an unlikely painting to attract much attention. But it has found a buyer, an affluent businessman living in Jonathan's adopted city of Rome. In an exchange of favors with an art dealer colleague, Jonathan unluckily offers to transport the Death of Socrates from Paris back to Rome. The assignment seems routine enough. The Parisian art dealer will package the painting and arrange the paperwork. All Jonathan must do is carry it to its final destination. And, of course, he will then be reunited with his girlfriend, Flavia di Stefano, who just happens to work for Rome's Art Theft Squad. It sounds like a fine plan, until things start to go wrong. Jonathan begins to realize that everything is not as it should be when a stranger approaches him at the train station and attempts to run off with the painting. Why would anybody go to such risk for a relatively unimportant piece of art? The answer becomes no clearer when Jonathan finally delivers his precious parcel to Arthur Muller, its new owner in Rome. After an initial inspection of the artwork, Muller seems distinctly less interested than the would-be thief, even asking Jonathan to arrange a sale to a new buyer. But if Muller doesn't want to keep the painting, somebody else desperately wants it. As events soon prove, somebody will even kill to possess it.   GIOTTO'S HAND General Taddeo Bottando of Rome's Art Theft Squad is in trouble: his theory that a single master criminal, dubbed "Giotto" - for the fourteenth-century Florentine painter about whom little is known - is behind a string of major thefts has aroused the scorn of his archenemy and rival, the bureaucrat Corrado Argan. Some clever thief has stolen more than two dozen paintings since 1963, always choosing unphotographed works that would be difficult to identify. Bottando thinks he sees a pattern, but a recent arrest means he may be wrong, and the hated Argan, who clearly wants Bottando's job, may be right again. Bottando is fortunate in his supporters, however - especially in Flavia di Stefano and her friend, English art dealer Jonathan Argyll. When a strange letter arrives on Bottando's desk, he hopes that the confession of a dying woman may provide just the clue he needs to find the mysterious Giotto. As Flavia hurries to Florence to interview the writer of the letter, the elderly Maria Fancelli, Jonathan sets off for England, where he will meet with Geoffrey Arnold Forster, a man who may hold many of the answers if only he will share them. But when Jonathan arrives in Norfolk, he discovers a body and a mystery that could lead to the greatest art find of his career.   DEATH AND RESTORATION From the author of the internationally bestselling literary sensation An Instance of the Fingerpost comes Death and Restoration, the sixth in Iain Pears' much-loved Jonathan Argyll art-mystery novels. The monastery of San Giovanni on Rome's Aventine Hill has no real treasures, except for one huge and disturbing painting, dubiously attributed to Caravaggio, of the breaking of Saint Catherine on the wheel. It's not a subject likely to appeal to many buyers of stolen art. But a Caravaggio is a Caravaggio -- or is it? Following a recent burglary at the monastery's chapel, there's little left to steal, so Flavia di Stefano of Rome's Art Theft Squad is particularly puzzled when she receives a tip that thieves plan to raid the building. What is there, except perhaps the Caravaggio, that professionals could covet? Even stranger is the sudden arrival in Italy of Mary Verney, an Englishwoman and thief whom Flavia and her art-expert fiance, Jonathan Argyll, have encountered before. She may be there as a tourist, but it's unlikely. Is Mary after personal riches, or is her trip, and her possible involvement in a theft, inspired by more terrifying circumstances? Jonathan also wonders about the intentions of Daniel Menzies, the 'Rottweiler of Restoration,' who is restoring the supposed Caravaggio in the disused monastery chapel where even the candles in front of a nearby icon of the Virgin and Child, long venerated by the local population for its special protection of those who offered prayers, have been extinguished. Something strange and threatening is occurring both inside and outside the monastery, and Jonathan and Flavia feel powerless when they fail either to stop a theft or a murder. As the two search for answers through the maze of monastic and police bureaucracy, they gradually reveal a surprise more shocking than even they had imagined. Rome is ancient and full of secrets, some of which never should be revealed, and Iain Pears is at the peak of his powers in this exquisitely rendered crime novel in which the Roman setting plays as memorable a role as any of the players.   THE IMMACULATE DECEPTION When a major painting is kidnapped days before an important international exhibition opens in Rome, Flavia di Stefano, newly appointed head of the Italian Art Squad, has a feeling her life is suddenly going to get very complicated. Things start badly when Flavia is told to get the painting back at all costs without causing any embarrassment to the country and without paying the ransom to the thieves. She knows she will be blamed if something goes wrong, and finds herself pushed ever further into unorthodox tactics to save both the painting and her job. Encouraged by her art-dealing lover Jonathan Argyll and her old boss, Taddeo Bottando, she delves deeply into past cases to try and identify those responsible for the kidnapping before it is too late, and in the process discovers a secret, lying hidden for decades, which gives her the biggest shock of her career. The Immaculate Deception, the seventh in Iain Pears's delightful Jonathan Argyll series, is a fascinating, witty and ingeniously plotted novel. NON SERIES AN INSTANCE OF THE FINGERPOST We are in England in the 1660s, Charles II has been restored to the throne following years of civil war and Oliver Cromwell's short-lived republic. Oxford is the intellectual seat of the country, a place of great scientific, religious, and political ferment. A fellow of New College is found dead in suspicious circumstances. A young woman is accused of his murder. We hear the story of the death from four witnesses: an Italian physician intent on claiming credit for the invention of blood transfusion; the son of an alleged Royalist traitor; a master cryptographer who has worked for both Cromwell and the king; and a renowned Oxford antiquarian. Each tells his own version of what happened. Only one reveals the extraordinary truth.   THE DREAM OF SCIPIO The Dream of Scipio, Iain Pears' first mainstream novel since An Instance of the Fingerpost, is a work of astonishing ambition that appeals equally to the head and heart. It is set in Provence at three different critical moments of Western Civilisation - the collapse of the Roman Empire in the fifth century, the Black Death in the fourteenth, and the Second World War in the twentieth - and follows the fortunes of three men, Manlius Hippomenes, a Gallic aristocrat obsessed with the preservation of Roman civilisation, Guilaume Noyen, a poet, and Julien Barneuve, an intellectual who joins the Vichy government. The story of each man is woven through the narrative, linked by the classical text that gives the book its title, and by each man's love for an extraordinary woman.