The Art of Deception

by Elizabeth Ironside

Overview

Art historian Nicholas Ochterlonie is the very model of a modern English gentleman, with a perfectly ordered life. But when his wife inexplicably demands a divorce, he finds himself diving into uncertainty like a junkie with a new drug. Soon he is risking his professional reputation, breaking the law, and embarking on a delirious affair with the mysterious Julian, beautiful and badly damaged by her past with a Russian gangster. Protecting Julian from the Mafya and challenging his colleagues' pet convictions give Nicholas an intoxicating new sense of himself. Of course, all addicts believe they're in control'until they aren't any more.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781934609408
Publisher:	Felony & Mayhem Press
Publication date:	12/16/2009
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	660,848
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 7.40(h) x 0.90(d)

Editorial Reviews

First published in the U.K. in 1998, Ironside's solid thriller provides an intriguing look at the contemporary art world. London art historian Nicholas Ochterlonie, while returning one evening to his late mother's flat, where he's lived since his divorce, rescues a woman from an apparent street mugging. The victim turns out to be his next-door neighbor, Julian Bennet, and the two soon become lovers. Ochterlonie is sure that the assault wasn't random and that a threat still looms. Meanwhile, he creates controversy with his growing and increasingly vocal suspicions that a famous Vermeer portrait has been misattributed to the painter. The plot thickens when a police officer from the fraud squad stops by to ask about the real owner of Bennet's apartment, a shady Russian businessman. Ironside (A Very Private Enterprise) does a good job of making her not-entirely-sympathetic lead accessible. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly