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Feint of Art
It is hot here in the UK, that kind of muggy heat that makes you to feel completely overwhelmed as soon as you move, bleugh, so I am chilling out with the cats who are making their unhappiness known with lots of audible sighs and general grumples. Thankfully I seem to have had better luck with my books this time, as soon as I read the first page of Feint of Art, I knew that this book would be a good’n – and after the last three disasters, I needed this to be a good book!
Annie Kincaid has painting in her blood – or to be more precise, forgery. By the age of 10 after painting a perfect copy of the Mona Lisa she was hailed a prodigy, but in her late teens after spending time with her professional forger Grandfather in France, she discovered that unless she wanted a life on the run with the threat of prison hanging over her, she needed a career change.
Despite her best efforts, her past has continually dogged her. A promising career as a professional restorer at the Brock Museum was halted when an expert, still smarting from the embarrassment of being outed as proclaiming one of her teenage forgeries as the real deal, revealed her past to the owners. This led to her being fired and her new career change, starting her own business specialising in faux finishing.
However hard she tries, her talents as a painter – and as a result of the tutelage of her Grandfather, her talent for detecting forgeries, is constantly called upon. This time her ex boyfriend, who also happens to be Head Curator of the Brock, asked her to authenticate a Caravaggio (which turned out to be a fake painted by one of her Grandfather’s cronies) in a midnight meeting, later on he disappears and a janitor is murdered.
To make matters worse, her new landlord is going to raise her rent – and her first meeting with him, she dinged his car and insulted him. So when she was tasked with finding the originals of some Old Master drawings that had been forged by the same man who created the copy of the Caravaggio, she thought that she could kill several birds with one stone and also raise some cash while she is at it.
Annie is a brilliant character, she has good intentions and would always drop everything to help a friend, unfortunately this also means that she finds herself in sticky situations. Other supporting characters include Mary her assistant; Annette the police woman; Frank her landlord and Michael the art thief. I really enjoyed this book and Annie was such a refreshing character with lots of dimensions. As I have mentioned many times before, I actually love to see faults in a character as it makes them more believable and the cast of characters in Feint of Art are all well-rounded and incredibly likable, even the slightly iffy Michael!
I would describe the book as a mystery romp as you are propelled through the chapters along with Annie. I liked the way that there were several new characters introduced throughout the book, instead of all lumped together at the beginning. It also means that when you think that you have an idea who the culprit is, someone new pops up.
The final scene was hilarious and beautifully captured the essence of the book. I can’t wait to read the next books, because you just know that Michael won’t be able to stay away and who knows what Annie will do next.
Hailey Lind’s website http://www.haileylind.com/
This book ticked so many boxes, a cozy murder mystery and Christmas – my favourite things, but as I started to read, it all went pear shaped.
The lead character Lucy Stone is married with children and is working herself to a frenzy keeping the house going, cooking up a storm for Christmas, looking after her husband and kids and working nights at a call centre for a catalogue company.
I found this book intensely depressing. The description of the call centre job was nothing but soul destroying, then one of their pet cats were killed, which Lucy and her husband casually dismissed (I think that I was more upset about it than they were). Then Lucy’s mother was coming to stay and there was a long description about her father’s death and how she was coping with it. In short, there was so much misery that the book gave me a stomach ache and life is too short to read books that do that to you, so I stopped reading it (something that I have only done with two other books). Out of curiosity, I flicked through to the last chapter and found out that I had guessed who the murderer was, so the murder mystery part of the book sucked too.
Some people really like this series, but it was just too much gloom and doom for me. Blarg.
There are a couple of hours left of Friday, so I have managed to squeeze in a Book BloggerHop – it happens every week and designed to bring book bloggers together and hopefully discover new blogs and books.
So, hello to any hoppers, thank you for visiting my little blog. I am a huge fan of murder mystery books and this blog features reviews of cozy mysteries, so pull up a chair, grab yourself a cup of tea and settle down with me and a good book.
Murder! She Read 