The time is the 1970s; the place, Southern California. The stolen canvas that Lew archer has been hired to retrieve is reputed to be the work of the celebrated Richard chantry, who vanished in 1950 from his home in Santa Teresa. It is the portrait of an unknown woman-and on its trail Archer moves with edgy competence among the intrigues of dealers and collectors. Until suddenly he finds himself drawn into a web of family complications and masked brutalities stretching back fifty years through a world where money talks or buys silence, where social prominence is a murderous weapon, where, behind the plausible facades of homes not quite broken but badly bent, a heritage of lies and evasions pushes troubled men and women deeper into trouble...