Deceptions: A Helena Marsh Novel

by Anna Porter

Overview

A savvy art world thriller with a strong, independent heroine and the follow-up to The Appraisal, finalist for the 2018 Staunch Prize.

Former Budapest cop Attila Feher would really like to see art expert Helena Marsh again, so he arranges a contract for her to determine whether a painting is a copy of a famous Artemisia Gentileschi canvas or the real thing. A simple appraisal becomes a dangerous assignment when usual eastern European gangsters show up and people start dying and the seething corruption that underlies the lost promise of post-Soviet Hungary swirls to the surface. In a race to get to the truth and to outwit her adversaries, Helena and Attila must solve the mystery of the painting’s origins.

Richly atmospheric, set in Strasbourg, Budapest, and Paris, this witty, sophisticated novel will satisfy readers of political thrillers by Alan Furst and Philip Kerr. Deceptions is a thinking-person’s thriller, a romp to the last satisfying page.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781770415386
Publisher:	ECW Press
Publication date:	04/06/2021
Series:	A Helena Marsh Novel , #2
Edition description:	No Edition
Pages:	280
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.63(d)

About the Author

Anna Porter is the award-winning author of ten books. Her recent work includes the non-fiction In Other Words, How I Fell in Love with Canada One Book at a Time, and Buying a Better World, George Soros and Billionaire Philanthropy, and the mystery novel The Appraisal, the first Helena Marsh book. She co-founded Key Porter Books, an influential publishing house she ran for more than twenty years. In addition, she writes book reviews, opinion pieces, and stuff about Central Europe. She is an Officer of the Order of Canada and has received the Order of Ontario.

Read an Excerpt

She sensed him before she saw him. The smell of wet wool and cigarettes. He approached cautiously on rubber soles, a little breathless, as he entered the salon and stopped a foot or so inside the door. She slipped the thin long-bladed knife from her sleeve, stretched her fingers over the handle and waited a moment – it was, she knew, a crucial moment because sometimes a moment would be too long – but this was Paris, not Moscow, not Bratislava and she was not working on a dangerous case. She glanced up at the large, burly figure. “Helena,” he said with a note of anxiety in his voice. The pedicurist, massaging Helena’s instep, may not have seen the knife, but he had. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Do I seem scared?” she asked.

“No,” he said, “Do I?”

“A little.”

She noted his badly shaven face, his pale eyes still fixed on her sleeve, his burgeoning belly stretching the grey woolen sweater over his corduroy pants. “Put on a little weight,” she said with a smile.

“All that rakott krumpli,” he said, “but I will lose it on delicate French food and wine.” He spoke English with a soft Hungarian accent, pressure on the endings, but a great deal better than the last time she saw him. Must have been taking lessons. A pity, she thought. She had liked his accent first, even before she began to like him.

Editorial Reviews

“Porter takes readers on an exhilarating ride.” — Publishers Weekly

“The plot proceeds in the usual Anna Porter fashion, offering sleuthing that is sophisticated, nervy and hardly ever on an even keel.” — Toronto Star

“Intricate and atmospheric … Porter’s plots are a deft and entertaining blend of caper, crime, and thriller elements, but it's this context as well as their setting — primarily Hungary, a place where, as one observer remarks, ‘the present was so deeply rooted in the past, it was not even the past’ — that gives them their rich texture and unexpected depth.” — Canadian Notes & Queries

From the Publisher