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Chief Inspector Maurice Clavel of the Paris criminal brigade has planned a relaxing Sunday when he's called to investigate a bizarre crime in the upscale Sixth arrondissement, where a young American has been viciously assaulted for no apparent reason. Ably assisted by Claire Simon, his very bright and alluring junior officer, by an American investigative reporter she becomes romantically involved with who is a close friend of the victim, and by a string of obscure clues-including shreds of pipe tobacco and photographs of twentieth-century Fauve paintings-Clavel methodically uncovers a very dark reality lurking beneath the gleaming surfaces of the city's genteel society. That includes its legendary art establishment, where even the work of artists one has never heard of can sell for astronomical sums, where the line between homage and forgery gets blurred, and clever people have constructed hidden scams that are notoriously difficult to reveal.