This novel combines a deft comedy of manners with a classic mystery set in London's most refined institution--the museum. When the glittering treasure of the ancient golden child is delivered to the museum, a web of intrigue tightens around its personnel.

"Following the death of a renowned and eccentric collector-author of Stuff, a seminal philosophical work on the art of accumulation-the fate of the privately endowed museum he cherished falls to a peripatetic stranger who had been his fervent admirer. This peculiar institution (The Society for the Preservation of the Legacy of Dr. Charles Alexander Morgan) is dedicated to the annihilation of hierarchy: peerless antiquities commune happily with the...