β Scribed by Aaron Elkins
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
The third installment in Elkins's spirited series featuring Seattle Art Museum curator/detective Chris Norgren was a Mystery Guild main in cloth.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
A perceptive look at the world of museums, dealers, and collectors through the somewhat innocent eyes of Chris Norgren, curator of Renaissance art at the Seattle Art Museum (A Glancing Light, 1991, etc.). The museum has been offered the gift of a newly discovered Rembrandt by long-established French gallery owner Renβ Vachey, notorious over the years for outrageous put-downs of his peers. There's a deadline for acceptance, and no scientific testing for authenticity is permitted. A similar offer, of a Lβger, has been made to the Musβe Barillot in Dijon--the victim some years back of one of Vachey's antic schemes. Is the offer legit or another trick to ridicule the establishment? To find out, Chris flies to France, meets Vachey and his dissolute son Christian, along with Edmond Froger, director of the Barillot; respected Lβger expert Jean-Luc Charpentier; and a host of other art VIPs. In the midst of the festive hoopla, someone attacks Chris, a claimant for the Rembrandt surfaces, and Vachey is shot to death. Chris manages to make his decision about the painting, enjoy some Paris time with girlfriend Anne, and solve the murder too. An unpretentious, conversational style, convincing plot, laid- back hero, easy-to-take art-history, and a loving evocation of Paris--in a fresh, funny, thoroughly entertaining story. -- Copyright Β©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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