Fine arts thrillers Archives

If We Were Villains

by M.L. Rio

I love a mystery that starts at the end. We know that Oliver Marks has just been released from jail after serving a ten year sentence, and he's finally ready to tell the truth. Ten years ago, Oliver was part of a close-knit group of Shakespearean actors at Dellecher Classical Conservatory, where rivalries and romance affect the troupe off stage with just as much drama as their performances. Their final year reads more like one of Shakespeare's tragedies. When violence erupts, the group tries to find out what happened while covering the truth to protect each other. A campus mystery full of Shakespeare references, perfect for fans of Donna Tartt.

Portrait of a Thief

by Grace D. Li

Five Chinese American college students become justice-driven international art thieves in this Ocean’s Eleven-ish heist novel. When he’s made an offer he can’t refuse, MIT student Will Chen recruits four brilliant accomplices—all with looming midterms—to fulfill an audacious goal: to break into art museums in five countries, in order to steal back artifacts that were once wrongfully stolen from China. If they succeed, they’ll receive a life-changing $50 million payout. The heist storyline pops and fizzes, but Li crams in plenty of substance alongside her flashy plot: an exploration of identity and belonging, crushing familial expectations, desires, love, and calling, plus meaningful LGBTQ representation and the seamless integration of pandemic realities. Word to the wise: This reads more Hollywood than real life but you’ll enjoy the ride. For fans of Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow and Daniel Silva’s The Cellist.

Portrait of an Unknown Woman

by Daniel Silva

From the publisher: "Legendary spy and art restorer Gabriel Allon has at long last severed ties with Israeli intelligence and settled quietly in Venice, the only place where he has ever truly known peace. His beautiful wife, Chiara, has taken over the day-to-day management of the Tiepolo Restoration Company, and their two young children are discreetly enrolled in a neighborhood scuola elementare. For his part, Gabriel spends his days wandering the streets and canals of the watery city, bidding farewell to the demons of his tragic, violent past. But when the eccentric London art dealer Julian Isherwood asks Gabriel to investigate the circumstances surrounding the rediscovery and lucrative sale of a centuries-old painting, he is drawn into a deadly game of cat and mouse where nothing is as it seems."

The Violin Conspiracy

by Brendan Slocumb

This fine arts thriller begins with a bang: Ray McMillian may be the most talented young musician in the world. Two weeks before the most important competition of his life, he opens his violin case after getting off a flight and discovers his $10 million dollar Stradivarius is gone—replaced by a white Chuck Taylor and a ransom note. I was hooked! Slocumb then takes us back in time to show us how Ray, a young Black man from North Carolina who doesn't have the family wealth or privilege so many of his classical music peers do, fell in love with both music and his great-great grandfather's fiddle, and came to devote his life to winning the Tschaikovsky Competition—and how he came to own a $10 million Strad! We also experience many painful and heart-pounding instances of the racism Ray experiences as a Black man moving through a space that's predominantly white—and how his Blackness is used against him by those who wish to claim his violin as their own. I loved this, and JD Jackson's narration was the icing on the cake.

The Marriage Portrait

by Maggie O'Farrell

In 1560 15 year old Lucretia left Florence to marry Alfonso, the Duke of Ferrara. Less than a year later she’d be dead and the rumor is her husband murdered her. Maggie O’Farrell took inspiration from Robert Browning’s poem My Last Duchess, widely believed to have been inspired by Alfonso. His Duchess Lucretia di Cosimo de’ Medici d’Este served as the inspiration for this puzzle of a historical novel. As Lucretia sits to have her portrait painted, it’s clear she’s in trouble. She’s unable to give her husband an heir, for reasons that aren’t her fault. People begin telling her she needs to have a plan and that she doesn’t know what her husband is capable of. Brilliantly written, O’Farrell paints gorgeous scenes in this portrait of what happens inside a fraught marriage.

The Girl from Guernica

by Karen Robards

Pablo Picasso made a powerful statement against war with his masterpiece Guernica, painted after the Basque town was aerial bombed during the Spanish Civil War in 1937. The painting serves as the inspiration for this historical novel. American Griff first rescues Sibi from the wreckage and then saves her life once more when he advises her not to tell anyone she saw swastikas on the planes. Germany denies any involvement and the Nazis won’t have any qualms in silencing her and her sisters. Sibi goes on to join the resistance as WWII gets underway, doing what she must to protect her family as the enemy closes in.

The Night Gate

by Peter May

In this gritty thriller, the connection between two murders more than 70 years apart lies in da Vinci's Mona Lisa. When Enzo Macleod investigates the death of a man buried beneath a fallen tree, the case quickly becomes mired in the past, drawing him back to Occupied France. Georgette was tasked to safeguard the Mona Lisa from the Nazis after France falls, and she's pursued by those who want to steal it for Hitler and Göring. But does she have the real painting or a forgery ordered by the Louvre? Macleod will need to discover the answer in order to solve the case. This is the seventh book in The Enzo Files series but it stands just fine on its own.

The Art Forger: A Novel

by B. A. Shapiro

What would you do if one of the stolen paintings from the infamous 1990 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist was dangled in front of you? Claire reproduces famous works of art but she still longs to paint her own work. When a gallery owner asks her to forge one of the Degas masterpieces stolen from the Gardner in exchange for a show at his gallery, she agrees, only to get embroiled in a mystery spanning centuries when the real stolen Degas painting is delivered to her studio—and she suspects it might be a forgery too. She’ll have to outwit collectors and art thieves alike as she races to discover the truth.

Fine arts thrillers