Pandora

No picture ever came more beautiful than Raphael’s Pandora. Discovered by a dashing young lieutenant, Raymond Belvedon, in a Normandy Chateau in 1944, she had cast her spell over the Belvedon family – all artists and dealers – for fifty years. Hanging in a turret of their lovely Cotswold house, Pandora witnessed Raymond’s tempestuous wife Galena both entertaining a string of lovers and giving birth to her four children.

These children grow up into chilly, manipulative Jupiter, who runs the family gallery, Alizarin the high-handed loner, Jonathan, who blithely beds every beauty he paints, and superbrat Sienna, shortlisted for the Turner Prize. Pandora, meanwhile, has been locked away in her turret, increasing her colossal value by the second.

Then an exquisite stranger rolls up, claiming to be a long-lost daughter of the family and setting the three Belvedon brothers at one another’s throats. Accompanying her is Zach, her fatally glamorous American Jewish boyfriend, whose very different agenda includes an unhealthy interest in the Raphael.

During a firework party, the painting is stolen. The hunt to retrieve it takes the reader on a thrilling journey to Vienna, Geneva, Paris, New York and London. After a nail-biting court case and a record-smashing Old Masters sale at Sotheby’s, passionate love triumphs and Pandora is restored to her rightful home.