Beautiful Deception

No one dies like that, unless ...

n a small city in South West France, an art historian falls to his death, a student is murdered, a museum curator is crushed in a freak accident.

Celestine Courbet, former detective in the Police Judiciaire, wintering in the small port nearby with her eccentric partner Jacques Lecoubarry, recognises the patterns and is drawn inexorably into a world of art forgery and organised crime, where desperate people take desperate measures and it seems everyone, even friends, are hiding something.

Hauled up for the winter aboard their barge Incognito, Celestine and Jacques are irresistibly drawn, like moths to a street lamp, towards mystery, murder, and peril. They seek to uncover the truth behind these unexplained deaths, and their investigation takes them from the local museum to the sophisticated art galleries of Paris and Zurich. Trying to force the players to reveal themselves, Celestine soon finds that she is the one out in the open and in peril.

Four suspects; the beautiful, the powerful, the devious and the vicious - how can she unravel the threads before another murder is committed?

This, the third in the Celestine Courbet series, surges towards a thrilling climax in the ancient heights of the town in the sky; but will the truth lead to redemption or more violent deaths?