STEPHEN DUANE, FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION He had a justly famous record with the F.B.I., and through a maze of violent action and stealthy murder, he traces the ART TREASURE MURDERS to their startling denouement. Some of the greatest of the world's paintings—slit from their frames in the great museums of Europe by the deft hand of the "Surgeon", so-called because the stroke of his knife is as deft and unerring as that of the greatest in the medical world. Then a wealthy art dealer of Boston is stabbed to death by the single thrust of a needle-pointed knife. A New York portrait painter meets the same dark death. A collector, a gallery clerk, an art salesman... Through the American art world strikes the terror of the needle-pointed knife. Is it the knife of the "Surgeon"? Special Agent Stephen Duane of the F.B.I. stepped into the case when Charles Francis Coleman was found in his car stabbed to death.