Episode
The Cat, the Mouse, and the Madonna | The Belgian Detective Mystery Audiobook
- Published
- Jul 6, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 4485
- Processing state
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Summary
Venice: a city of bridges, bells, damp palaces, and secrets that travel more easily by gondola than by foot. When the Belgian Detective and Captain Hastings are summoned to the Palazzo Varano, they find the formidable Contessa Bianca Varano in a state of magnificent outrage. Her family’s treasured Madonna — a late fifteenth-century devotional painting long kept in the palace — has vanished overnight. In its place is a copy. A very good copy. Too good, perhaps. The frame was sealed. The doors were locked. The windows opened only onto the canal. And beside the false Madonna lies a mocking note signed with the mark of Venice’s most notorious gentleman thief: a black cat wearing a coronet. But the Belgian Detective is not convinced. The famous Cat may have vanity, style, and excellent handwriting — but this crime smells less like a cat than a mouse. Soon the palace fills with suspects: a furious Contessa who needs money but despises buyers, a charming nephew drowning in debts and sentiment, a nervous young restorer with blue pigment on her sleeve, an American collector with more dollars than restraint, a polished secretary who knows too much, and a real Venetian thief deeply offended by the poor quality of the impersonation. As false Madonnas multiply and everyone in the palazzo tells the truth only after lying has become inconvenient, the Belgian Detective uncovers a mystery not only of theft, but of ownership, family pride, romance, forgery, and the uncomfortable question of whether a beautiful object can belong to a house that may once have stolen it. The Cat, the Mouse, and the Madonna is an original Golden Age-style mystery set in Venice — a witty, elegant art-theft whodunnit about copies, reputations, old sins, and a city where even crime pauses to argue about taste.…