The Secret of the Gondola

A masterpiece by Canaletto leads a young art historian on the trail of an unsolved mystery. A young art historian pursuing academic success. A painting by the most famous eighteenth-century painter of vedute, Canaletto. A gondola once possibly belonging to the poet Robert Browning—and who else before him? These are the key elements of the novel.

When Jeremy Allyn is assigned Canaletto's Vedute by his teacher as the topic for his dissertation—a subject many have already written about—he realises he must find an original perspective. He therefore decides to focus on Canaletto's figures, a secondary feature of his celebrated architectural scenes.

This marks the beginning of an adventure with unexpected turns that will lead Jeremy to make some astonishing discoveries and to uncover a crime which had remained buried for centuries.