Three timelines, three centuries, one painting. In 17th-century Amsterdam, Sara de Vos — one of the first women admitted to the Dutch Guild of St Luke — paints a haunting winter landscape. In 1950s New York, a lawyer named Marty de Groot discovers that the painting hanging on his wall is a forgery, and the trail leads to a young art history student who needed the money. Half a century later in Sydney, the paths of these characters converge at an exhibition where both the original and the copy will hang side by side.

Smith writes with real care for the period detail, and the 17th-century Amsterdam sections are the most vivid. The novel is elegantly constructed — a slow thriller about art, authenticity and the way the past catches up with us — and it holds its threads together neatly without feeling mechanical. An absorbing, intelligent read.