A mysterious painting, a dying pope and many interests are at play in a momentous conflict over the transformation of the Church: this is a dark thriller and a contemplation of spiritual themes and art.

After living his entire life in Cape Town and having a lot of pain from his past, British painter Ernest Hamilton decides to spend some time in Rome. In contact with its beautiful art, he experiences his second youth, partly thanks to Chiara, a young restorer with whom he has immediately clicked. The work the young woman is restoring – a Baroque painting of no special worth, but with an unusual subject: the collapse of St Peter’s Basilica – vanishes into thin air. A few days later, the painting reappears in a location where another crime has just taken place: the abduction of the Ivorian cardinal Maltiade who, according to many, is the favourite candidate for succeeding the Pope, who is gravely ill. Why does someone want to stop him from becoming pontiff? Could it be because, as the first black pope, he intends to relocate St Peter’s to the Ivory Coast? And what does Chiara’s painting have to do with this? In order to discover it, Ernest finds himself investigating a tangle of occult sciences and dangerous conspiracies.

pp.336

An art-conspiracy thriller set in the shadows of the Vatican, where Caravaggio’s lost paintings become a matter of life and death.

A major Caravaggio exhibition in the Vatican, conceived by the Pope in the hope of renewing faith in the Church, opens the door to a centuries-old conspiracy of stolen paintings, corruption and revenge, where a lost masterpiece may contain a heresy powerful enough to threaten the Church itself. At the heart of the mystery are a dangerous woman from Eastern Europe in pursuit of a vanished Caravaggio, and Ernest Hamilton, a gifted painter believed to share the same dark genius — and curse — as Michelangelo Merisi himself.

As vanished works resurface and present-day crimes echo mysteries buried for four centuries, a world of hidden archives, altered crime scenes and ecclesiastical corruption emerges from the shadows. Blending art history, conspiracy and noir suspense, the novel reimagines Caravaggio’s legacy as a living force where grace and sin, truth and power collide.

pp.294