This listing is for Margaret Truman Murder at the National Gallery Hardcover BCE.  

Hardcover: 340 pages

Publisher: Random House; Book Club Edition (July 2, 1996)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0679435301

ISBN-13: 978-0679435303

Caravaggio expert Luther Mason can hardly contain his excitement when he gets a call from aging Mafia don Luigi Sensi offering to sell him the Grottesca, a never-seen masterpiece that fell off a truck. All Washington is abuzz with the news that Mason's using the new canvas, its provenance suitably whitewashed for public consumption, to anchor his Caravaggio exhibit. But Mason has even bigger news up his sleeve: He plans to commission two copies of the painting from alcoholic forger Jacques Saison, sell one to unscrupulous San Francisco collector Franco del Brasco, return the other to the Italian authorities, and keep the original Grottesca for himself. It's a mad, intricate plan, quite unlike anything Truman (Murder on the Potomac, 1994, etc.) has presented before, and it's made considerably more heartrending, though hardly more cogent or plausible, by her closeups of Mason's unhappy relationships with his demanding mother, his heartless ex-wife, and his narcissistic son. Here's a man who's obviously riding for a fall, and when he finally becomes the eponymous corpse (the third of five involved in the Caravaggio fraud), the story rather runs out of steam, leaving nothing but wife-and-husband lawyers Annabel and Mackensie Smith to track down the lesser fry still trying to promote a dishonest dollar from Mason's legacy. The intricate, unconvincing caper makes you wonder whether the tale itself could be a forgery, though the ranks upon ranks of obscure eminences and the general absence of mystery mark it as genuine.

Continuing her success in Capital Crimes, the bestselling author of First Ladies takes readers behind the exhibits at one of D.C.'s most popular attractions. When a senior curator at the National Gallery discovers a lost Caravaggio, he concocts a masterly scheme to exhibit and exploit the masterpiece, which escalates into murder as an art form.

Truman's latest mystery is set in the dazzling, fast-paced world of international art. Lawyer turned gallery owner (and occasional amateur sleuth) Annabel Reed-Smith is the nominal heroine in a story that moves from Washington's National Gallery, where money, power, and great art reign, to the seedy back alleys of Rome, which serve as home to art forgers and thieves. Luther Mason, senior curator at the National Gallery has pulled off quite a coup by finding a little-known Caravaggio that has been missing for years. Now he is bringing the painting to Washington as part of an exhibit that will be the capstone of his career. But Luther has a nasty secret: he's cooked up a scheme to substitute not one but two forgeries for the real Caravaggio, sell the forgeries, and take the authentic painting and his ill-gotten gains to a remote Greek island, where he'll live out the rest of his days, satisfied, rich, and with a painting by his beloved Caravaggio gracing his walls. Naturally, things start to go wrong. When blackmail and murder result, Annabel is called in to help investigate. One of Truman's best efforts, this novel combines excitement, entertainment, and suspense with solid writing and creative plotting. Highly recommended. 

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