The Delusion Gambit: The Dust of Centuries II

'The Delusion Gambit' was originally published as 'Delusional Traits', the second part of the Rare Traits Trilogy. It is 1970 and artist Annie Carr has a problem. Charged with brutally murdering two people, she faces execution unless she can convince her court-appointed psychiatrist she is not fit to stand trial. And the only way she can do that is to tell the psychiatrist the truth about her life, all four hundred and fifty-two years of it. Over forty years later, in 2012, art-forgery expert Ced Fisher is contacted by a woman from Boston wanting him to compare paintings by two female artists, one modern and one from the 19th century. When Ced discovers that the paintings are by the same artist and yet neither is a forgery, he immediately thinks of his quincentenarian friend John Andrews and his incredible history. Could the artist be John's long-lost daughter, Paola Santini, born centuries ago in Naples? And if so, who is the woman in Boston? Further enquiries reveal that the modern artist, Annie Carr, was a delusional murderer incarcerated in a state psychiatric institution in Colorado in 1970, and worse, she is long dead. But if Annie Carr really was John's daughter, Ced knows she will have honed her survival skills to perfection over the centuries and her apparent death could be a ruse. If that is the case, where is she now? When John Andrews picks up the trail, he discovers he is not alone: a mysterious billionaire is also searching for Annie, and with almost unlimited resources, he will stop at nothing to find her.