A major plot point near the end of the novel turns on a painting by the Renaissance Venetian artist Giorgione, "Venus with Pistol".

The historical accuracy of the pistol held by the fictional Venus turns out to be a matter of life and death to the narrator, a dealer in antique firearms.

The Times Literary Supplement said that the novel “works up to beautiful tension and ingenuity.”[1] Peter Parley in the London Spectator offered “all praise” for it, recommending it “for those with a thirst for the find in the attic and a bottle of scotch in the third drawer down.”[2] Gilbert Kemp is dealer specializing in antique guns in London with a somewhat dubious background.

On his next commission in Amsterdam, he helps obtain an un-catalogued work of Vincent van Gogh, but the art expert certifying the painting is soon brutally murdered.

Things heat up in Venice and culminate in Vienna where Kemp finally unravels the web of treachery and deceit that he has unwittingly stumbled into.