Borrower of the Night

by Elizabeth Peters Book 1 in the Vicky Bliss Mysteries series.

First published 1973

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4.1(1,320)

Art historian Vicky Bliss discovers a clue suggesting that the lost final work of the German sculptor Tilman Riemenschneider may survive in a castle near Rothenburg. Determined to find it, she enters into competition with an arrogant colleague and joins a house party whose members have competing claims on the building and its contents.

Secret passages, staged hauntings and increasingly dangerous accidents turn the scholarly search into a murder investigation. Vicky must reconstruct the castle’s sixteenth-century history and identify which modern treasure hunter is willing to kill for the missing carving before the evidence—or the work itself—is destroyed.