Once again, Gillian Linscott guides her delightfully starchy heroine through the politics, personalities, and perils of early twentieth-century England. When the suffragette movement is bequeathed a valuable painting by campaigner Philomena Venn, suffragette and amateur sleuth Nell Bray agrees to retrieve it. The plan is simple: Collect the picture from Philomena's widower, Oliver, take it to Christie's, and sell it to raise much-needed funds. But Nell is in for a surprise when she returns from the Vennes' home in the Cotswolds: The painting he has given her is a fake! When Oliver refuses to hand over the real painting, his son, political activist Daniel Venn, suggests an alternative plan to Nell: Why doesn't she break into the house and switch the paintings? Against her better judgment she agrees, and in the process she uncovers a far more serious crime---a brutal murder in which she is now personally embroiled. . . .

Gillian Linscott worked as a journalist for the Guardian and the BBC before turning to full-time crime writing. Her previous novels, featuring the suffragette detective Nell Bray, have won her the CWA/Ellis Peters Historical Dagger 2000 and the Herodotus Award for Best International Historical Mystery Novel.