When Richard Underberg's fiancee, Claudine d'Este, receives a mysterious phone call from a dying German lawyer to restore film from World War II and decipher codes in a notebook, it is a request she cannot refuse. Closely shadowed by the enigmatic Dominique Prideux, who appears to be an art thief, Underberg and d'Este find themselves on a trail of plundered art. Complicating everything is the legacy of Underberg's father, a decorated German solider in 1918 and then a Jewish-German refugee in 1936. The novel begins in Cape Town, but traverses the art world of Europe, and the red dunes of the Kalahari, as Richard and Claudine embark on their quest to uncover art stolen by the Nazis, come to terms with Underberg's family's past, and perhaps even unearth a lost painting by Vermeer in the process.