"Next Time" by Marc Levy, summary

Mark Levy’s novel "Next Time" was published in 2004. The book combines an art history detective story with a story about love that can transcend earthly death through a series of reincarnations. The story centers on the search for a lost masterpiece by a nineteenth-century Russian artist, revealing the mystery of the tragic deaths of lovers in past lives.

The Riddle of the Forgotten Master

Jonathan Gardner, a renowned Boston expert on nineteenth-century painting, is preparing for his wedding to artist Anna Walton. Along with his close friend, auctioneer Peter Gwell, he travels to Miami for a conference. There, Jonathan delivers a paper on the work of Vladimir Ratskine. The artist created numerous paintings in Russia, but after exhibiting his paintings of popular poverty at the Hermitage, he incurred the wrath of the emperor. His wife, Clara, was executed by the guards, and the artist himself fled to England.

In London, the gravely ill Ratkin produced a series of outstanding works, abandoning depictions of women and the color red. The exception was his final, mysterious creation, which disappeared during an auction in 1868. Jonathan dedicated his career to finding this masterpiece. In a hotel bar, the expert encounters a gray-haired woman wearing a diamond ring. The stranger discusses the energy of time and the immortality of souls that find each other across eras. She warns Jonathan against rejecting true love, which threatens the soul’s final extinction.

Soon, Peter receives an email from Christie’s London: the gallery is offering five paintings by Ratskine for sale. An expert and appraiser immediately fly overseas.

Meeting on Albemarle Street

In London, before starting work, Jonathan stops at a café opposite a gallery on Albemarle Street and meets a young woman named Clara. They immediately develop a mutual attraction and an inexplicable sense of long-standing intimacy. Clara turns out to be the gallery’s owner. For security reasons, the insurance company delivers the paintings one per day.

Jonathan spends his days studying the arriving paintings, confirming their authorship by the Russian master. His conversation with Clara develops into mutual affection. She tells of growing up orphaned in a boarding school and of her domineering grandmother, who demanded that her granddaughter abandon her artistic pursuits and never set foot on the ancient family estate.

During an evening stroll along the Thames embankment, Clara thanks Jonathan and kisses him on the cheek. This first touch sends the expert into a trance: the modern street transforms into the boardwalk of old London, the clatter of hooves echoes, and a woman’s voice begs for salvation. Frightened by the vision and his obligations to his fiancée, Jonathan hurries back to Boston.

An unsigned masterpiece and the search for evidence

At home, Jonathan finds his fiancée’s studio empty and sees her new work, a meticulous depiction of the ancient Boston harbor from a century ago. Realizing he can’t resist his feelings for Clara, the expert returns to England and visits her country estate. Touching the doorknob in the library, they re-experience their shared vision of escaping in a horse-drawn carriage.

Clara brings Jonathan into the study and unveils the fifth painting, "Young Woman in a Red Dress." The canvas is striking in its bold composition, but it lacks the artist’s signature. It was this lack of an autograph that led to the downfall of the artist’s patron, Sir Edward Langton, in 1867: London dealers considered the painting a fake, the gallery owner’s house was looted, and Langton fled to America.

Jonathan undertakes to confirm the masterpiece’s authenticity. In Florence, together with his old friend Lorenzo, he studies the archives of the Zecchi shop and discovers the composition of the unique oils and badger-hair brushes purchased by Langton. In London, Dr. Jack Sisell takes X-rays of the painting, confirming the canvas’s structure and revealing Ratzkin’s hidden pencil marks.

Another touch of hands transports the lovers to a nineteenth-century auction room, where two unknown assailants steal a painting hidden under a blanket. In Paris, specialists at the Louvre’s laboratory, led by François Hébrard, examine the canvas in a particle accelerator. The analysis reveals human blood, toxic realgar, and an unknown protective varnish in the red paint. In London, burglars break into Clara’s home and steal her blood test results. Escaping a storm, the couple retreat to a country estate, where they hear the familiar cry, "Hurry, hurry!" and finally declare their love for each other.

The Alice Walton Conspiracy

Jonathan gives the auction house partners an official certificate of authenticity for the painting and returns to Boston. At home, Anna shows him surveillance photos from Europe and threatens him with imprisonment for conspiring with Clara if the wedding doesn’t take place. In the bride’s paintings, Jonathan notices the silhouette of that very same English country castle.

Trying to understand what’s happening, the expert goes to Yale University. An elderly security guard, O’Malley, tells him about the Experimental Sciences Department, which was closed forty years ago. Its head, Alice Walton, put students into trances to awaken memories of past lives, which led to the deaths of several people, including student Jonas.

Jonathan finds Alice in Cambridge and recognizes her as the gray-haired woman from Miami. The woman reveals the truth: in the nineteenth century, she was the wife of Sir Edward Langton. She hated her husband’s adopted daughter, Clara, because her father loved her more than his biological daughter, Anna. Alice poisoned the ailing Ratzkin, brought shame upon her husband, and for a century and a half haunted the souls of the lovers, seeking to sever their bond and ultimately destroy their souls.

The Secret of the Diary and the Deadly Poison

In England, Peter Gwell breaks down a wall in the attic of a country castle and discovers Ratskin’s true secret chamber. Among the belongings is the artist’s diary. In it, Ratskin writes that Clara is his biological daughter, taken away by Langton. Dying from illness and poison, the artist painted a portrait of the girl in his own blood, concealing her features and his signature under a layer of special varnish. At midnight, moonlight shines through the dormer window, revealing the face of an adult Clara and Ratskin’s signature.

Peter and Clara bring the collection to Boston. At the hotel bar, Alice slips a deadly toxin that destroys blood vessels into Clara’s drink. Clara is taken to the hospital in serious condition. Alice promises to give the antidote only if Jonathan marries Anna.

During the wedding at St. Stephen’s Church, Anna stops the priest. She confesses that her mother lied about the existence of an antidote and begs the groom to hurry to the dying woman. Peter and Jonathan, accompanied by a police escort, rush to the hospital.

Realizing the inevitability of his beloved’s death, Jonathan asks Peter to see the matter through and secure Ratskin’s confession. The expert locks himself in a hospital room, attaches an IV needle to his arm, and injects himself with Clara’s blood. Uniting their lives and souls in a deadly kiss, the lovers die together.

Triumph of Memory

The police, with the support of Detective George Pilges, expose Alice Walton’s crimes. Peter Gwell sends his Boston doorman, Jenkins, to London to see Dorothy Blackstone, the housekeeper, while he restores Ratskine’s masterpieces and donates them to the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg.

Many years later, in the Ratskin Hall, museum director Yuri Yegorov notices a young couple whose features are unmistakably those of Jonathan and Clara. The director hands the young man an old letter from Peter Gwell. After reading his friend’s message about the immortality of sincere feelings, the young man puts his hands behind his back, squints, and smiles happily.