A Virgin on the Rocks

Two partners in crime embark on an art caper among the avant-garde of 1930s Paris in this thriller from the renowned twentieth-century mystery author.

Berlin has not been kind to struggling English writer Bernard Fosdyke. He’s on his last legs financially, and―as Hitler rises to power―he’s mistaken for a Jewish man and beaten by a pair of storm-troopers. Luckily, Hal Levy comes to his rescue. 

The big, blond American is known by other names. He has the fake passports to prove it and to get them safely over the border into France. Sensing a kindred criminal spirit in Bernard, Hal offers him a way out of his hapless circumstances. An accomplished art thief and forger, Hal has enough talent to duplicate the masterpieces that he steals, so no one is the wiser. His new target: Leonardo da Vinci’s Virgin of the Rocks, hanging in the Louvre. And he wants Bernard to help him with the switch. 

In a Paris bustling with such famed artists, writers, and intellectuals as Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, and Pablo Picasso, the unlikely duo masterminds an audacious crime. And only dirty cops, evil Nazis, and double-crosses can stop them . . .

Michael Butterworth was born in Nottingham in 1924 and served as a lieutenant in the Royal Navy during World War II. After the war, he studied and taught art for some years. He turned from drawing children’s comic strips to writing scripts for them, quickly graduating to an editorship. Ten years later, he was an editor of women’s magazines. Later, he became a full-time writer, which he did with a pet mongoose on his knee. He also had a hawk, peacocks, swans, a Newfoundland dog the size of a donkey, and many cats. He passed away in 1986.