There was nothing simple about Bruce Kellner. He wasn't an artist, but he was a man of paintings-an art sleuth and a finder of missing treasures. Having just closed the file on a stolen Picasso art caper that had taken him to France, England, Mexico, and the Sabine Hills of Italy at Rocca Sinibalda, he is celebrating with an evening out on the town.

While enjoying an aged Chateuneuf du pape at a restaurant in Nice, Kellner is approached by Comtesse Marie-Claude de Hautefort, a French countess who wishes to hire him to locate a missing work of art. It's a drawing said to have been penned by Leonardo da Vinci in the late fifteenth-century and now it's missing from the countess's thirteenth-century chateau.

Intrigued, Kellner takes on the case and interviews friends, family, and police about the robbery during a tour that takes him to some of Europe's greatest treasures. Though Kellner has always been most successful at his job, this case leads him to more than he bargained for-a discovery he couldn't have imagined in his wildest dreams.