Things are not going well for Val Caruso. He just turned forty, his divorce to his second wife is now final and he has just been informed that his promotion to full curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art has fallen through since the will which provided the endowment that would pay for his position is being contested. The outlook was indeed  bleak.

So when Val got a call from Esther Lindauer, the director of the Institute for the Recovery of Stolen Art, or IRSA, an organization that helped its clients recover art that had been looted or confiscated or otherwise forcibly taken during WWII, he was intrigued.  Maybe a little sleuthing for a good cause might help ameliorate the bleakness he was feeling.

The story was a familiar one. Mr. Solomon Bezecca of NY, now 90 some years old and in poor health, was trying to recover of two Renoir paintings that had been taken from his great grandfather’s home in Milan during the war. The paintings had dropped out of sight until 2013 when Sol’s niece had seen an article in the New York Times talking about a Milanese art dealer, Ulisse Agnello who now owned them after finding then in a flea market in Hungary. He had bought them for €90 because he liked the frames. The paintings themselves had been over painted and so were of not interest until Agnello had removed the frames and had then noticed that there were older paintings underneath. Bezecca had sued using the services of IRSA, but they eventually lost in the appeals court in Milan. What Lindauer wanted Val to do was to negotiate some kind of deal, so that Bezecca could keep the paintings “on loan” until he died. Val had previously negotiated such a deal for a woman and a Whistler, which he felt was sheer luck, but after hearing Lindauer”s persuasive pitch, Val agreed to try again while on his next business trip to Milan.

But as soon as Val arrives in Milan complications and danger seem to stalk him. The paintings are now owned by several people, the restoration of the paintings is taking much longer than expected and meetings after meetings are scheduled but for one reason or another the paintings’ stake holders never seem to show up together. Then while inspecting the paintings at the art restorer’s studio, thieves break in, steal the paintings and hit Val on the head knocking him unconscious. Shortly thereafter the original owner, Agnello, disappears and Val begins to realize that he must untangle the twisted web ownership while trying to avoid whoever is trying to stop him from uncovering the true story of the paintings.

Fun and different from the usual “who done it,” this story commanded your attention and kept you guessing to the very end!

Brenda’s Rating: ****(4 Out of 5 Stars)

Recommend this book to? Marian and Sharon

Book Study Worthy? Sure.

Read in ebook format.