From Library Journal
Published as a paperback original in 1990, this title unfortunately floundered. Swan, however, has since found success with his 1997 novel The Cezanne Chase (LJ 3/1/97). Like that title, this offers a mystery involving art fakery, in this case some less-than-genuine early sketches of the Mona Lisa, which must be sniffed out by Scotland Yard's Jack Oxby. With Cezanne a hit, this will undoubtedly find a larger audience now.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From Kirkus Reviews
Following The Czanne Chase (1997)--the debut of Inspector John Oxby, of C13, the CID's Art and Antiquities Squad-- Newmarket has reprinted Oxby's debut, originally published in 1990 as a mass-market paperback. Following three years of intensive preparation, well-fed art dealer Jonas Kalem is ready to offer to the world the discovery he's long been hinting at: a new page from the sketchbooks of Leonardo da Vinci, with others perhaps to follow. The first drawing, a study for the Mona Lisa accompanied by notes in Leonardo's distinctive left-handed writing, is worth millions, or would be if it hadn't been drawn within the month by gifted forger Curtis Stiehl, whose recent release from prison had closed the circle of Kalem's hand-picked colleagues in the fraud. Retired art historian Giorgio Burri has been waiting to start the ball rolling on authenticating the bogus drawings; unwitting American chemist Eleanor Shepard has been spending a year in Florence looking for likely sources of 500-year-old paper and charcoal; and Kalem's light-fingered assistant Tony Waters stands ready for whatever crasser skullduggery his boss may command, beginning with borrowing an authentic Leonardo drawing from the Windsor Library so that Stiehl can quickly make a closer study of the master's technique. The theft from the library goes off with all the clockwork precision of a good TV movie, but an unexpected glitch--the result of a police officer's incredible indiscretion--brings C13 into the picture for a series of cat-and-mouse chases that range from New York to Lake Como, where a showdown between Oxby's colleague, Supt. Walter Deats, and Kalem's troops provides a rousing, if unsurprising, denouement. Crammed with information on everything from Leonardo's pigments to the Royal Family's art holdings, though competently colorless in its own dishonor-among-thieves caper. (Book-of-the-Month Club featured alternate selection) --
Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
