"Jamie Ramsgill has decided to leave his teaching post, return home to Philadelphia, and take a job with his old friend David Laycutt, the internationally acclaimed architect. But his friend disappears before Ramsgill starts work, taking a substantial portion of his firm's assets with him. The only clue to his whereabouts is an empty envelope from Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, and Ramsgill's hunch that Laycutt is being blackmailed." "At the same time, Ramsgill is trying to reconcile with his long-estranged brother Michael, whose wife is a curator with her own mystery on her hands. She's authenticating a recently discovered Thomas Eakins painting - a work purported to be a nude study of his one-time mistress - with a checkered past." "When Ramsgill realizes that this friend's disappearance is linked to the painting's provenance, he finds that he has two mysteries to solve - one Victorian and one contemporary. Jamie is also implicated in a brutal murder, and he must avoid the police as he plies the historical streets of the City of Brotherly Love in order to clear his name. The revelations that he finds in his search include one that will stay with Ramsgill for the rest of his life...."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved