Art historian, minor television celebrity and Belvedere Tours leader Tristan Barclay sets out on what is meant to be his final European art-and-culture tour. Secretly, however, he is planning a grand gesture that will shock the world, and he cannot carry it out alone. A seventy-three-year-old member of his tour group volunteers her supposed invisibility, while the rest of the travellers become eager accomplices. Complications multiply when a budding romance distracts Tristan from his mission and the group’s audacious scheme turns into a high-stakes art caper. As they travel among Europe’s old masters, danger begins to hide behind every ornate column.