" 'To my son Andrew,' it said, 'I leave the problem of the Velasquez.' " He leaned forward and added eagerly, "The thing is, you see, there wasn't any Velasquez... there never had been."

The Gaskells, wealthy owners of a family shipping line, were a querulous mix of self-righteous puritans and rascally pirates, so it when it came to light that one of them might have purloined a museum's priceless Velasquez, it was only natural that another of them would sternly demand its return. Soon that particular Gaskell winds up dead as an old master, with yet another Gaskell on trial for the murder. Antony Maitland becomes involved in the case-his wife Jenny has a cousin who, perhaps rashly, is rather smitten with the defendant-and with Antony comes the reluctant participation of his acid-tongued uncle, Sir Nicholas Harding, the eminent Q. C. While Sir Nicholas duels with the opposition in court, Antony tries to fill in the missing portions in the Gaskell clan's weird portrait of murder and save an innocent person from being framed.

"The most durable and appealing series of English courtroom mysteries!" Publishers Weekly

"Sara Woods again proves herself to be the master of detective fiction." Leeds Journal