Dans un village français endormi, le corps d'un homme atteint d'une balle dans la tête est exhumé à côté d'un arbre tombé. Une semaine plus tard, un célèbre critique d'art est sauvagement assassiné dans une maison voisine. Les décès sont survenus à plus de soixante-dix ans d'intervalle. Sollicité par un confrère d'inspecter le site du premier, l'expert médico-légal Enzo Macleod se retrouve rapidement mêlé à l'enquête. Deux récits extraordinaires sont mis en place - l'un historique, se déroulant dans les années de guerre perfides de la France occupée ; l'autre contemporain, situé en automne 2020 alors que la France rentre dans le verrouillage de Covid. COUVERTURE SOUPLE

In a sleepy French village, the body of a man shot through the head is disinterred by the roots of a fallen tree. A week later a famous art critic is viciously murdered in a nearby house. The deaths occurred more than seventy years apart. Asked by a colleague to inspect the site of the former, forensics expert Enzo Macleod quickly finds himself embroiled in the investigation of the latter. Two extraordinary narratives are set in train - one historical, unfolding in the treacherous wartime years of Occupied France; the other contemporary, set in the autumn of 2020 as France re-enters Covid lockdown. And Enzo's investigations reveal an unexpected link between the murders - the Mona Lisa. Tasked by the exiled General Charles de Gaulle to keep the world's most famous painting out of Nazi hands after the fall of France in 1940, 28-year-old Georgette Pignal finds herself swept along by the tide of history. Following in the wake of Da Vinci's Mona Lisa as it is moved from château to château by the Louvre, she finds herself just one step ahead of two German art experts sent to steal it for rival patrons - Hitler and Göring. What none of them know is that the Louvre itself has taken exceptional measures to keep the painting safe, unwittingly setting in train a fatal sequence of events extending over seven decades. Events that have led to both killings.