Fire and Clay

James Fox, the foremost authority on the Messiah violin made by Antonio Stradivarius in 1716, is assassinated after revealing that a violin owned by the Vatican is not the famed Messiah. Former journalist and Stradivarius expert Mary Bond, to avoid being the assassins next victim, is compelled to join forces with Ben Grady who has just been released from Brixton prison after eleven years for forging violin labels. Together, they pursue a trail that promises to expose the real Messiah, but it is a trail plagued with treachery, deceit and assassination courtesy of a secret branch of the Vatican Swiss Guard known as the Jinn Gesellschaft. The race to find the twenty million dollar violin wends its way through Italy and France, with events over three centuries having a bearing on the final outcome. Ending on the banks of the river Thames in a twist that nobody saw coming, authority is compromised in two countries and puts Mary Bond and the Messiah violin in grave danger.