In the golden light of dawn on Phillip Island, art restorer Leroy Hamilton reveals hidden truths for a living. By midday, he is chasing one that someone desperately wants to keep buried.

Leroy Hamilton has spent sixty-three years learning patience. As a former barrister turned master art restorer, he understands the delicate art of knowing what to remove and what to leave behind. But when a celebrated J.M.W. Turner painting is stolen from the supposedly impenetrable Hamilton family vault, he is confronted with a crime that defies all logic.

There is no forced entry. No alarms. Nothing is taken except the canvas, leaving behind only a single drop of warm wax and a cryptic symbol carved into the wall: a wave swallowing an eye.

The mark is the signature of the Aesthetic Correctors?a radical group thought extinct since the 1890s who believed in "liberating" art from private owners to purify it through either donation or destruction. Forced out of retirement by his old ally, Jack Flint, Leroy realises this is no ordinary heist. It is a ritual. A philosophical declaration.

As Leroy and his unwaveringly perceptive Kelpie, Ringo, begin to peel back the layers of the crime, they uncover a mystery not of greed, but of ideology. The theft of a ten-million-dollar masterpiece was an act of faith. Now, Leroy must race against time to answer the only question that matters: did the Correctors steal the painting to save it, or to erase it from existence entirely?

Perfect for fans of The Goldfinch and literary mysteries by Peter May or Louise Penny, Murder in Linseed introduces a brilliant, reluctant investigator in a story about art, obsession, and the fine line between restoration and destruction.

Standalone book that may be read in any sequence in the series