Sitara said, with awful distinctness, I think I m going to die. And that s how I got stuck with the annual corpse. Half an hour later I stood in an empty flat, alone with a stranger who was very recently, and very violently, dead. Rushing to Sitara s aid, Lalli s niece Sita is distracted by Raphael s Sistine Madonna. Why is it monochrome? And what does it have to do with the body on the living-room floor? Such questions are hardly relevant to the police in their hunt for the murderer. But Lalli is a detective who revels in curiosities, and she thinks otherwise. A brisk thriller of deceit and intrigue, The Monochrome Madonna has Lalli at her most astute as she interprets the nuances of a murder without motive.