When the Santa Barbara art museum unveils its newest acquisition, the long-lost masterpiece by Dante Gabriel Rossetti isn’t the only surprise behind the red curtain – so is the museum’s curator. Dead. The case has everything Shawn likes: it’s bizarre, it’s baffling and there’s a snack bar at the crime scene. But the investigation gets a lot less fun as he and Gus begin to realise that the clues are leading them towards a centuries-old cabal desperate to hide a terrible secret and more than willing to kill the two detectives who are trying to reveal it.

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Is this haute literature? Nope. Is this thought-provoking and innovative? Nope.

It’s a run-of-the-mill detective story with some witty banter. I started skipping pages at the start as there wasn’t a lot happening and the two main protagonists were starting to annoy me.

“So much for the brilliant powers of observation,” Gus said.
“Observation has nothing to do with it,” Shawn said. “It’s a matter of authorial discrimination. Simply spewing out every stray bit of information lying around is not a sign of wisdom.”

I totally agree – I totally agree. There was little to no wisdom in this book.