Though greed, arrogance, solipsism, and marital strife all play their charged roles in Michael Frayn's Headlong, it's primarily a comic novel about research—not exactly the most tantalizing satirical hook, especially when that research covers topics as obscure as "the impact of nominalism on Netherlandish art in the 15th century." But Frayn, a playwright best known for his seminal backstage farce Noises Off, filters large blocks of historical text through such a cracked, obsessive mind that the story twists into something strangely urgent and compelling. Engaged in the sort of marital rivalry that only academics could comprehend—he's into iconology, while she's into iconography—Martin Clay and his wife escape to a rural enclave outside London to work on their respective books. An unexpected dinner invitation to the rustic estate of crass landowner Tony Churt and his young wife leads to an epiphany when Clay is led through his host's art collection. In a musty breakfast room, collecting soot from the fireplace, sits what he believes is a lost masterpiece, the missing piece in a seasonal panel by 16th-century painter Pieter Bruegel. From that moment on, he embarks on a secret and ridiculously elaborate plan to steal it away from its uncultured owner. Frayn's startlingly original fusion of suspense, parched wit, and real intellectual rigor would never cohere were he not so attuned to his hero's distortive mind. A classic unreliable narrator, Clay reserves his biggest scams for himself, not only lying about his motivation for taking the piece, but also any evidence in his research that casts doubt over whether it's really a Bruegel. While it's initially disconcerting for Frayn to halt his gripping story with pages of centuries-old Dutch history, Headlong deepens into a sly comment on the pitfalls of high-mindedness and intellectual dishonesty. In the end, what the painting reveals about the man is more important than what the man reveals about the painting.