Death on De Vergulde Lelie

In a city where a single flower is worth more than a man's life, some secrets are deadly enough to kill for.

Amsterdam, 1637. At the height of the insane Tulip Mania, a group of the city's wealthiest speculators gather on a lavish barge, De Vergulde Lelie (the Gilded Lily), for a secret auction. The prize: the Semper Augustus, a tulip bulb so rare it could buy a palace. But before the first bid is cast, the night is shattered by a scream.

The host, a ruthless and widely hated speculator, is found murdered. The priceless bulb is gone. Trapped on the barge by the frozen canals, a handful of suspects are locked in a cage of opulence and fear: the bitter rival on the brink of ruin, the indebted English lord, and the vengeful farmer who claims the bulb was stolen from him first.

The city watch sees a simple case of greed. But they're not looking closely enough.

Signor Alvise Grimaldi, a disgraced Venetian glassmaker living in exile, sees what the others miss. He's not a detective; he's an artist with an eye for fatal flaws. While everyone else is blinded by the missing bulb, Grimaldi is drawn to the real heart of the crime: the silent, stolen glances between the victim's beautiful, trapped wife, Katarina, and the brilliant, obsessive painter, Frans van Loo.

Their forbidden love is a secret far more dangerous than any financial debt.

As Grimaldi peels back the layers of deception, he realizes the murder wasn't a simple robbery. It was a crime of passion, a desperate act disguised to look like greed. Now, he's in a silent duel with a killer who is just as much an artist of deception as Grimaldi is of glass.

In a world gone mad with speculation, can a broken artist expose a truth hidden in a single drop of paint before the ice thaws and a devastating secret sinks them all?