Sir Richard White, the director of a major international bank, appears to be acting strangely. So his nephew, Jeremy, calls in an old friend, the art historian Tim Simpson, to follow Sir Richard down to Italy to keep an eye on him.

Meanwhile, as the executor of a friend's estate, Tim also becomes embroiled in tracking down a missing painting by the distinguished American artist, Winslow Homer, a painting which he may have inherited. He follows the trail first to Hastings, and then to Cullercoats, near Newcastle, where Winslow Homer produced over 100 paintings of fishing scenes on a visit to Britain in 1881. There Tim finds he has apparently inherited a painting, not by Homer, but by Dame Laura Knight RA., a member of the Newlyn School of early 20th century painters. As it becomes clear that Tim's art knowledge is indispensable to several different people, he begins to find his loyalties torn, the more so as some of his contacts start to get bumped off.

The thirteenth in what the Library Journal described as 'one of the finest series being written today,' Simpson's Homer is John Malcolm's richest, most satisfying novel to date.