Death of an Elgin Marble
By (Author) David Dickinson
Little, Brown Book Group
Constable
11th April 2017
6th April 2017
United Kingdom
General
Fiction
823.92
Paperback
384
Width 132mm, Height 195mm, Spine 25mm
266g
The British Museum in Bloomsbury is home to one of the Caryatids, a statue of a maiden that acted as one of the six columns in a temple which stood on the Acropolis in ancient Athens. Lord Elgin had brought her to London in the nineteenth century, and even though now she was over 2,300 years old, she was still rather beautiful - and desirable.
Which is why Lord Francis Powerscourt finds himself summoned by the British Museum to attend a most urgent matter. The Caryatid has been stolen and an inferior copy left in her place. Powerscourt agrees to handle the case discreetly - but then comes the first death: an employee of the British Museum is pushed under a rush hour train before he and the police can question him.What had he known about the statue's disappearance And who would want such a priceless object Powerscourt and his friend Johnny Fitzgerald undertake a mission that takes them deep into the heart of London's Greek community and the upper echelons of English society to uncover the bizarre truth of the vanishing lady...Detective fiction in the grand style -- James Naughtie
Beguilingly real from start to finish . . . you have to pinch yourself to remind you that it is fiction - or is it -- Peter Snow
Splendid entertainment * Publishers Weekly *
David Dickinson was born in Dublin. With an honours degree in Classics from Cambridge, David Dickinson joined the BBC, where he became editor of Newsnight and Panorama, as well as series editor for Monarchy, a three-part programme on the British royal family.