Virgin on the Rocks — Michael Butterworth

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 . . .