Paris, 1955
France is locked in a
perpetual state of crisis.
Ten governments in ten years have fallen.
The national spirit is a shambles.
The colonies are in
revolt.
Yet Paris is still the fading international capital of...
Glamour...
Fashion...
Creative inspiration...
Political refuge.
And the nation also finds itself with an unexpected new resource...
It's legacy of Impressionism...
The painting of the recent French past which has suddenly exploded in popularity...
To become the most coveted genre of art
and greatest museum draw in history.
A phenomenon largely fueled by the superstar
ascendancy of a tragic Dutch exile whose art and myth have seized the imagination of the world...
Vincent van Gogh.
But at the very peak of this midcentury artistic miracle that is so vital to France's self-image and financial future, a threat to it appears...
The possibility of a long-lost Van Gogh letter so devastating in its revelations that it could forever destroy the artist's vaulting myth.
As the specter of this explosive document sets in motion a scramble to acquire it, the melee of vying characters will, by a twist of fate, include a later-era soul-mate of Vincent...
Another solitary and unhappy exile in France...
Blacklisted American screenwriter Wally Boyd.
Over twenty-one days
in April, this unlikely
detective...
Buoyed by the possibility
of personal redemption...
And aided by his
friendship with
the czar of the
Parisian
underworld...
Will journey into
the Van Gogh
past, until...
His probing of the artist’s suicide...
A network of clues in the canvases...
A living witness to the Van Gogh deathwatch...
And a series of tantalizing
fragments from the missing
letter itself...
Convince him that the world’s most iconic artist was the victim of an unthinkable crime.
A crime with enormous implications for the future
of Europe...
Ruthlessly covered-up for sixty-five years.
And his obsession to solve this crime will take him to...
The darkest corners of the City of Light...
The budding Algerian Rebellion...
The defiant Egypt of Gamal Abdul Nasser...
And the bed of a beautiful heroine of the Resistance
who is the most admired woman in postwar France.
Placing him at odds with a desperate plot by French traditionalists to save their crumbling overseas empire...
And a disastrous American scheme to fight Communism
in the Arab World by supporting Islamic fundamentalism...
All culminating in a violent climax in the glitz of the Eighth Cannes Film Festival.
Challenging Wally Boyd to abandon
his former loyalties...
Save France from cataclysm...
And find his own truth in the labyrinthine enigma that is Vincent van Gogh.
A political thriller.
An epic murder mystery.
A mindboggling historical exposé.
