Psychiatrist Andrew Marlowe, devoted to his profession and the painting hobby he loves, has a solitary but ordered life. When renowned painter Robert Oliver attacks a canvas in the National Gallery of Art and becomes his patient, Marlow finds that order destroyed. Desperate to understand the secret that torments the genius, he embarks on a journey that leads him into the lives of the women closest to Oliver and a tragedy at the heart of French Impressionism....

After she unwittingly captures a shocking crime on camera, a rash of mysterious, treacherous incidents convince Lyra Prescott that she's trapped in a sinister scenario headed for a violent ending. As the noose of deadly intrigue tightens around her, she turns to her best friend, Sidney Buchanan, whose connections bring dauntless and devilishly handsome FBI agent Sam Kincaid into Lyra's running scared life.