'Mr Kemp - I believe you smuggle art? I have a little proposition...' It seemed like money for old rope. All Kemp had to do was arrange the smooth passage of a Cezanne across the border to Switzerland, so it could then be transported to its new owners in Nicaragua. And anything was preferable to London in January. After the train-ride, he awakes in a Zurich park with a bump the size of a burial mound on his head, minus the priceless work he'd been carrying. The very next day he runs into Harry Burroughs at the airport. Kemp suspects that it wasn't just coincidence. Burroughs is a fine-art dealer, and an even finer crook. If he is mixed up in all this, Kemp knows that from now on he will have to earn his money the hard way. First published in 1969,Venus with Pistolwas Gavin Lyall's fifth novel.