Brian Howell has masterfully interwoven three imagined episodes from the life of Johannes Vermeer. We observe the painter's own childhood and apprenticeship. We read a crime story involving an episode from the life of a modern-day 'copyist', who is blackmailed into forging this masterpiece to save the woman he loves. We follow a French connoisseur who travels to Delft to visit Vermeer, only to find himself embroiled in a clandestine and deadly debate of the Painter's Guild about a new invention.