Il pavone dell'Imperatore

Script: Stefano Santarelli and Michelangelo La Neve
Artwork: Luigi Coppola
Cover: Giancarlo Alessandrini

China, 2nd. century B.C.: a man builds automatons that have the appearance of birds, and are even capable of flight. His ingenuity gains him the favor of the emperor, but his rise to fame is short-lived: several courtiers, jealous of his position, have him put to death, and his greatest creation vanishes into thin air. New York, year 2006: a rich collector of objets d’art is found murdered in his villa, and in no time at all the crime is pinned on Jessica, his attractive young wife, given that everyone is convinced she made a marriage of convenience. So the girl turns to the only person prepared to believe in her innocence, her friend Diana Lombard. Diana gets Martin involved too, and he soon finds a “mystery-laden” trail of clues to follow. It appears that the victim had close relations with traffickers in works of art, and that the absolute jewel of his collection, a stunning mechanical peacock of Chinese construction, was actually suspected of being of illicit origin…