The most prominent painter in southern California is found hanging in his Laguna Canyon studio. The Laguna Beach police initially think suicide; his sister says murder and works with Detective Tom Deaton to find her brother's killer. Together they follow a trail of death that takes them from southern California to France, England, and, finally, to a darkened cave that holds unspeakable secrets. The most ambitious yet of Richard B. Schwartz's novels, is a tale of love and death, of power, greed, and perversity. Its subject is art, art whose price is written in blood.