A Long Time Coming

by Aaron Elkins

Overview

It takes a real artist to solve a crime this big—in a brilliant, engrossing mystery by Edgar Award winner Aaron Elkins…

Art curator Val Caruso is not a happy camper. His promotion has just been nixed, his divorce has become final, and he’s dug himself into a nice little rut for his fortieth birthday. The uplift? A trip to Milan to help Holocaust survivor Sol Bezzecca recover a pair of cherished sketches by Renoir. They’d once been given to Sol’s family by the then-unknown artist, looted by the Italian Fascist militia, and now after decades in hiding have turned up for auction. It’s Val’s job to get them back.

Unfortunately, his Italian adventure takes a dangerous turn when he becomes trapped in an intricate web that reaches back to World War II—and is still very sticky with art thieves, forgers, and somebody who wants Val out of the picture permanently. When the lost Renoirs are stolen yet again, Val is more determined than ever to hunt them down. The reward for reuniting an old man with his rightful past? Priceless.

But doing it is going to be murder.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781503902381
Publisher:	Amazon Publishing
Publication date:	08/07/2018
Pages:	268
Sales rank:	865,356
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Aaron Elkins’s mysteries and thrillers have earned him an Edgar, an Agatha, a Nero Wolfe Award, and a Malice Domestic Lifetime Achievement Award. His nonfiction works have appeared in Smithsonian magazine, the New York Times magazine, and Writer’s Digest.

A former anthropology professor, Elkins is known for starting the forensic-mystery genre with his 1982 novel, Fellowship of Fear. He currently serves as the anthropological consultant for the Olympic Peninsula Cold Case Task Force in Washington State.

Elkins lives in Washington with his wife, Charlotte—his occasional collaborator—who is also an Agatha winner.

Editorial Reviews

06/04/2018
This engrossing mystery from Edgar-winner Elkins (the Gideon Oliver series) takes Val Caruso from New York, where he’s a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to Milan, where his friend Esther Lindauer, the director of the Institute for the Recovery of Stolen Art, wants him to negotiate the return of two Renoir paintings looted by members of a fascist gang in 1944 from the home of Maurizzio Bezzecca. Maurizzio’s grandson, Holocaust survivor Solomon Bezzecca, who witnessed the crime as a 16-year-old boy, wants the paintings back in part because one of them is a portrait of his grandfather. Though Val believes the cause futile because Solomon has already lost his case in court, he vows to try. Once in Milan, Val approaches the Renoirs’ current owner, an art supplier who bought them at a flea market in Hungary for practically nothing, but things quickly fall apart, and the paintings are stolen again. Filled with art lore and plenty of Milan local color, this standalone will keep readers turning the pages. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

Engrossing…Filled with art lore and plenty of Milan local color, this standalone will keep readers turning the pages.” —Publishers Weekly

“Great Milanese backgrounds, literate dialogue among characters whose appearances are described to the last jot and tittle, pleasingly shifting alliances…” —Kirkus Reviews

“Classy work, deserving patience.” —Booklist

From the Publisher

2018-05-15
The latest stand-alone—or is it a series kickoff?—from the chronicler of forensic archaeologist Gideon Oliver (Switcheroo, 2016, etc.) presents an art curator whose business trip to Milan is complicated by the momentous favor he agrees to do for an old friend.Newly divorced, kept from his promised promotion from associate curator to curator at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, and turning 40 to boot, Valentino Caruso is in no mood to be nice to anyone. But when Esther Lindauer, director of the Institute for the Recovery of Stolen Art, asks him to beg a favor on behalf of concentration camp survivor Solomon Bezzecca, whose legal bid to recover two early Renoir paintings taken from his family during the war has just been rejected, Val finds the old man so genuine that he can't resist. And even though the court has just ruled in his favor, Val's old mentor, Ulisse Agnello, the Milanese art supplier who bought the paintings for a pittance at a Hungarian flea market, is perfectly willing to loan the less valuable one to Sol, who's more attached to that one anyway. Ulisse tells Val, however, that his hands are tied unless Benvenuto Castelnuovo, the wealthy couturier who financed his courtroom proceedings for a hefty share of the proceeds, and Giulietta Barone, Ulisse's maybe-lover who's scheduled to put the paintings on the block next month, both agree to the loan. The situation gets even dicier when Val learns that Ulisse has engaged activist restorer Dante Zampa, who has a notorious reputation for improving the canvases he works on, to uncover the Renoirs that X-ray analyses indicate lie hidden beneath the flea-market paintings Ulisse bought just for their frames. What could possibly go wrong—unless one of the principals in the deal gets murdered, and Val is on the scene when the paintings get stolen on two separate occasions?Great Milanese backgrounds, literate dialogue among characters whose appearances are described to the last jot and tittle, pleasingly shifting alliances, and an epilogue that seems to go on forever.

Kirkus Reviews