While Anna is collecting her personal belongings from her office, terrorists attack the World Trade Center. She manages to escape the 9/11 tragedy, but is missing and presumed dead. She flees to England to advise Victoria to sell her Van Gogh not to Fenston but to a Japanese industrialist. When she arrives in London, she learns that Victoria has been murdered by someone who had broken into her home, killed her and sliced off one of her ears. Anna intercepts the Van Gogh with the compliance of Victoria's sister, Arabella, and flees to Bucharest with the painting in an attempt to save it from Fenston's clutches. She plans to sell it to the Japanese collector. She realizes that Fenston will kill anyone to get his hands on the painting. She must elude not only Fenston's ex-con assistant, Karl Leapman, but also Fenston's hired assassin, Olga Krantz, and FBI agent, Jack Delaney. Delaney has seen a link between Fenston and the homicides of three collectors besides Westwood who owned paintings that Fenston coveted, He is not sure whether Anna is Fenston's accomplice or an innocent pawn. Anna's flight takes her across the world in her efforts to thwart Fenston and ends back at the Westworth estate in a final confrontation with the assassin.

This is Archer's first work of fiction after seven years. He proves that he can still produce a work of excitement and suspense. The story is fast-paced and full of twists, told with skill and detail. There are many facts about the art world, Van Gogh's paintings and the 9/11 attack. Anna is a clever, cool and plucky heroine. The account of her escape from the World Trade Center is breathtaking and graphic. A long-awaited, thoroughly enjoyable story from one of the top suspense writers.