Kelly Jones, The Lost Madonna

The Lost Madonna

Kelly Jones

Berkley, Feb 2007

ISBN: 0425214192

In 1999, Charley Stover, Dean of an American university in Florence, Italy, invites art historian and restorer Suzanne Cunningham to teach a course there. She reluctantly accepts, but also thinks back to November 1966 when she was backpacking in Italy at a time when the Arno River flooded Florence. Suzanne stayed to help with the restoration of invaluable art from the Renaissance while falling in love with her partner on saving masterpieces, Stefano Leonetti; however their tryst ended poorly and she has not returned to the location of her heartbreak until now.

Preparing for her class, she reads a book that shocks her with the claim that Duccio di Buoninsegna's late-thirteenth-century masterpiece Madonna and Child was lost during the flood. Suzanne knows otherwise because she personally restored this precious work of art alongside Stefano after the torrent. Unable to resist, she begins a search to trace THE LOST MADONNA starting with looking for the man who still holds her heart.

Using the infamous flood of 1966 as a basis for this thriller, Kelly Jones provides her audience with an electrifying tale of suspense filled with twists until a final confrontation. The storyline is in many ways an amateur sleuth investigative thriller as the heroine seeks her former lover and through him hopes to learn what happened to the painting they restored. THE LOST MADONNA is a one-sitting novel as the art is cleverly intertwined into a delightful investigation led by a lead character whose need to know surpasses her fears of what she will learn.

Harriet Klausner