The Immaculate Deception

By Iain Pears

Clever and witty art history-mystery featuring Jonathon Argyll, scholar and sleuth, from the bestselling author of ‘An Instance of the Fingerpost’.

How do you resolve a scandalous kidnapping without paying the ransom or attracting any attention? It's not a question Flavia di Stefano, acting head of the Italian Art Theft Squad, would normally need to answer. Unfortunately, the Italian prime minister is asking it.

As Flavia begins a desperate search for the Claude Lorrain landscape, snatched while on loan from the Louvre, her husband embarks on a rather more leisurely quest. Jonathan Argyll is keen to discover the provenance of a small Renaissance painting, titled The Immaculate Conception, as a favour to its owner. His enthusiasm wanes when the investigation brings him into unexpected danger. There's no turning back, though, and soon husband and wife are uncovering shocking secrets that will bring them into the path of some very dangerous enemies indeed…

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins UK
• Release date: Jan 30, 2014
• ISBN: 9780007387526

Iain Pears

Iain Pears was born in 1955, educated at Wadham College, Oxford and won the Getty Scholarship to Yale University. He has worked as a journalist, an art historian and a television consultant. He is the author of many books, including the bestselling An Instance of the Fingerpost and The Dream Of Scipio. He lives with his wife and son in Oxford.

Reviews for The Immaculate Deception

[altheaann · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This one is the most recent in the series... It was as tightly-plotted as 'Death and Restoration,' and the writing was as good, but I didn't like it as much - for personal reasons, I have to admit: At the outset, we're informed that Flavia and Jonathan have just gotten married. Of course, she immediately turns out to be pregnant. (It has to follow in that order, even though they've been living together for years, right?) The pregnancy is obvious to the reader (when is a woman ever repeatedly nauseous in a book except when she's pregnant?) but somehow not to Flavia. But of course, she's delighted when she finds out, even though this may very well mean the end of her brilliant career in the police force (Every career woman, upon getting pregnant just 'wants to stay home and paint the kitchen,' right? Argh.)

Anyway - the plot cleverly balances Jonathan's quest to discover the provenance of a painting owned by Flavia's boss, who is planning retirement, (Of course this involves sources dropping dead and uncomfortable secrets coming to light...) and Flavia's involvement with an art theft case - where the political implications reach straight up to the Prime Minister. Radical terrorists and plots to bring down the government may be involved - but are these just dead-end leads? Again, the villains are not quite who one might expect them to be, and lies and deceptions are layered one upon the other....

[bookmarque · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Even though this is the last in a series of novels featuring art crime, it was still engaging and I didn’t feel as though I was at sea with regard to the characters and their situation. Yeah, there’s some backstory there that I didn’t know, but it didn’t matter to the crime. I was puzzled as to who the main character was though, none of them hogged the screen time and since there were two separate mysteries to be solved it could have gone either way. Early on there’s mention of an old nemesis; an art thief who got away with it and I knew she’d figure into the solution, but I was a tad surprised at how. Maybe if I’d read previous books first I’d have suspected. While I have to take the author’s art expertise on faith, I have my doubts because he’s one of those writers who thinks a bullet spins a person around and knocks them backwards. Not on this planet with our current laws of physics. Sigh. It’s so disappointing to read that particular line of bullshit over and over again. Will someone get a clue, please?Anyway, overall it’s a satisfying mystery with plenty of pastoral Italian atmosphere. It makes you want to wander Florence and Tuscany drinking wine, eating olives and appreciating art. I may pick up earlier volumes in the series when I need something relatively cozy.

[probably_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

At the end of this one, Flavia seems to be done with the official art theft squad.