J.D. ROBB'S PAGE: Eve Dallas series #61 FRAMED IN DEATH,& #62 STOLEN IN DEATH

FRAMED IN DEATH
J.D. ROBB
St. Martin's Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Death imitates art in the brand-new crime thriller starring homicide cop Eve Dallas from the #1 New York Times-bestselling author J.D. Robb.

Manhattan is filled with galleries and deep-pocketed collectors who can make an artist's career with a wave of a hand. But one man toils in obscurity, his brilliance unrecognized while lesser talents bask in the glory he believes should be his. Come tomorrow, he vows, the city will be buzzing about his work.

Indeed, before dawn, Lt. Eve Dallas is speeding toward the home of the two gallery owners whose doorway has been turned into a horrifying crime scene overnight. A lifeless young woman has been elaborately costumed and precisely posed to resemble the model of a long-ago Dutch master, and Dallas plunges into her investigation.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I'm new(ish) to the Eve Dallas storyverse. An abortive early run went badly and left me not interested in her. I tried again when someone whose taste is like mine, queer sex and crimes that do not involve above-the-necessary sexual violence aganst women and zero rapes (never gonna happen in Eve's world) told me to start at #40 (Obsession In Death) to get past some issues. I listened, I'm okay with the series now; but there is a LOT more straight-people sex than I ever want in a book I purchase for myself.

That said, this art-crime thriller gave good value for icks endured. The art world of 2061 is the art world of 1761 with faster transportation; the same sort of narcissists will always become artists because without that drive, why would one dream of putting one's creative soul out there for any- and everyone to opine about, comment on, write nastygrams about. Now thwart the narcissist's desire for eyeblinks, and watch the meltdown. It took the form of murder in a very arty setting this time.

Eve's no stranger to the stranger side of life. I don't want to harp on how she came by her PTSD, but it raised my hair (what's left of it) and my gorge. The revolting details...well, find out yourselves or start at book 40 and learn more slowly. Moving on...the body is discovered in a location that a stonking great clue. But Robb's no knob, she misdirects and obfuscates and casts doubt on the obvious, facile solution. I was sure I knew why, of course, it's in synopsis. I was most of the way to a conclusion (the right one) when Robb bobbed a big ol' red herring at me. I'm not five-starring the read because that certain reveal happened earlier than I prefer in my murder investigation stories.

Still, *happy sigh*

I like playing at solving the mysteries, and even more when Something Exculpatory Happens (but it gets explained later). Keeps me from autopiloting past the clues. Ma'at is served, of course. There are mysteries where the perp does not get punished, and that's okay; then there are the ones whose perps died before they're about to be punished. Those mildly do not please my orderly side.

I fear the Spoiler Stasi's shrieking vituperative hordes, so that is explicitly a general observation, not a hint. The entire point of this story is to examine in fine detail Entitlement. What could possibly be more timely. Just ask Prince Andrew.

A better-than-average reading experience for me, in a long series that seems not to sag as much as I'd expect for how long it's been running. The prose is never the problem, it's pleasant to read, but nothing stands out. I think that's a gift Robb gives to her readers: Shes's not calling attention to the Writerlyness or the Phrasesmithing. She is telling you the story effectively, unadornedly; you get the story, not the writer.

Generous of you, ma'am. Thank you most kindly for the gift.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

STOLEN IN DEATH
J.D. ROBB
St. Martin's Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, preorder now for delivery on 3 February 2026

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A violent death and a vault of stolen treasures has Eve Dallas struggling to solve crimes old and new in the next thriller in the #1 New York Times-bestselling series.

A blow to the head with a block of amethyst has left multibillionaire Nathan Barrister dead—while nearby, a vault, its door ajar, sits filled with priceless paintings, jewelry, and other treasures. Lieutenant Eve Dallas’s husband, Roarke—who misspent his youth in Ireland as a scrappy thief—recognizes at least two stolen pieces among the hoard. The crime scene suggests a burglar caught in the act. But only one item seems to be missing.

Then it’s revealed that the vault had actually belonged to the victim’s late father—and no one in the household knew it was there until a recent remodeling project exposed it. To protect the family name and business, they explain to Eve, they’d been looking for a way to return the ill-gotten gains anonymously and avoid the police. But now the police are all over their elegant house, and have a bigger, bloodier mystery to solve.

By all accounts, Nathan Barrister was a good man, a generous employer, a devoted husband and father. As for his father—he clearly had secrets. Now it’s up to Eve and her team to find out if those secrets got Nathan killed—and if it was a crime of passion or revenge.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: "The sins of the father" has a long, interesting history in English usage. I the sixty-second book in this (apparently immortal) series, it's prominently aimed at the very wealthiest in society. Greed and covetousness are very much in Roarke's past, and Eve deals with Entitlement all day every day. They need both outlooks to solve this weird crime.

I was very interested by the unusual set-up for the crime. It feels very surprising to me, very weird indeed. I did not expect to have the dead billionaire not be the real villain of the piece. The real villain was more satisfying.

Because it's not coming out until February, and because I've given this one and book sixty-one four stars each, I'm not risking my sanity to say more than, "I've never given one of the series more than 3.5* before...but these got 4" and leave you to discover why. Do not start here...see my review of FRAMED IN DEATH for my best series-order advice.

Let's just say I get it better now than ever.

BARRY LANCET'S PAGE: JAPANTOWN & TOKYO KILL, first two of his Jim Brodie series

JAPANTOWN
BARRY LANCET (Jim Brodie #1)
Simon & Schuster
$17.00 trade paper, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In this “sophisticated international thriller” (The New York Times Book Review), an American antiques-dealer-turned-reluctant-private-eye must use his knowledge of Japanese culture to unravel a major murder in San Francisco—before he and his daughter become targets themselves.

San Francisco antiques dealer Jim Brodie receives a call one night from a friend at the SFPD: an entire family has been senselessly gunned down in the Japantown neighborhood of the bustling city. As an American born and raised in Japan and part-owner of his father’s Tokyo private investigation firm, Brodie has advised the local police in the past, but the near-perfect murders in Japantown are like nothing he’s ever encountered.

With his array of Asian contacts and fluency in Japanese, Brodie follows leads gathered from a shadow powerbroker, a renegade Japanese detective, and the elusive tycoon at the center of the Japantown murders along a trail that takes him from the crime scene in California to terrorized citizens and informants in Japan. Step by step, he unravels a web of intrigue stretching back centuries and unearths a deadly secret that threatens not only his life but also the lives of his entire circle of family and friends.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Oh dear. I'm really Over the "Asians are naturally master assassins" trope. It's a whole star off. The parts about being trained and the family inheritance of the skills...well, I'm gonna say it: "1984 wants its tropes back." I could hear "Mr. Roboto" playing in the background.

Then I realized the book is ten years old, and it makes more sense. 2014 is culturally closer to the 1980s than the 2020s are. And please can we retire forever the "grieving for dead wife fuels badassery" trope? It's called fridging nowadays and it plays poorly in 2024. I myownself never liked it because women aren't solely victims which is the message this trope sends.

So, well, since you hated it why'd you review it? is forming on your mental lips. I didn't hate it. I was very intrigued by Brodie's multicultural upbringing and his proficient code-switching from sleuth to art-world wheeler-dealer; from US to Japanese norms; from loving dad to vengeful rageball. Author Lancet manages all these transitions without making me, a skeptic towards the majority of Brodie's identities, feel like I've got whiplash. An excellent talent, that. A man whose self contains such a wide latitude is a hard creation.

Layers of connection within the story, threads of identities intertwining among the threads of action aren't quite so convincing. Why are we hopping between first-person cinematic view and limited third person? An omniscient narrator doesn't blend well in between first and third person narration, true; but when we're moving between limited PoVs we need to know eventually who the third person is, or it feels like the writer took the easy way out. That diminishes the real impact of the first-person narrator's effortfully built solidity in the reader's imagination.

I'm not honestly able, then, to get past three and a half stars in what would ordinarily have been a more than four-star read. I'll go on to the next on slightly wary but willing to be there.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++



TOKYO KILL
BARRY LANCET (Jim Brodie #2)
Simon & Schuster
$17.00 trade paper, available now

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: In the second thriller of this new series from “a fresh voice in crime fiction” (Kirkus Reviews), antiques dealer-turned-P.I. Jim Brodie matches wits with an elusive group of killers chasing a long-lost treasure that has a dangerous history.

When an elderly World War II veteran shows up unannounced at Brodie Security begging for protection, the staff thinks he’s just a paranoid old man. He offers up a story connected to the war and to Chinese Triads operating in present-day Tokyo, insisting that he and his few surviving army buddies are in danger.

Fresh off his involvement in solving San Francisco’s Japantown murders, antiques dealer Jim Brodie had returned to Tokyo for some R&R, and to hunt down a rare ink painting by the legendary Japanese Zen master Sengai for one of his clients—not to take on another case with his late father’s P.I. firm. But out of respect for the old soldier, Brodie agrees to provide a security detail, thinking it’ll be an easy job and end when the man comes to his senses.

Instead, an unexpected, brutal murder rocks Brodie and his crew, sending them deep into the realm of the Triads, Chinese spies, kendo warriors, and an elusive group of killers whose treachery spans centuries—and who will stop at nothing to complete their mission.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Oh great...Japanese assassin dynasty first, now Chinese triads.

Not my favorite transition. Nor is the grafting on of the seemingly inescapable "love interest," a woman (natch) to help Our Hero forget the wife he lost before book one began. I'm not as forgiving the second time out. The same "Asian assassin dynasty is invincible until white guy raised in their culture comes along to show 'em how it's done because because they killed his wumman" stuff that turned me off of James Bond happens here.

Do better. This crud's tired and so am I. Though I admit the artistic bit of the series interests me, it felt totally unintegrated into the story this time; permaybehaps the miasma of heterosexuality, always disagreeable to me, got in my way.

Wharever; I'm out.

THE VANISHED COLLECTION, a family's heritage raped away by Nazis

THE VANISHED COLLECTION
PAULINE BAER de PERIGNON (tr. Natasha Lehrer)
New Vessel Press
$12.95 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five, for the message if not the messenger

The Publisher Says: It all started with a list of paintings. There, scribbled by a cousin she hadn't seen for years, were the names of the masters whose works once belonged to her great-grandfather, Jules Strauss: Renoir, Monet, Degas, Tiepolo and more. Pauline Baer de Perignon knew little to nothing about Strauss, or about his vanished, precious art collection. But the list drove her on a frenzied trail of research in the archives of the Louvre and the Dresden museums, through Gestapo records, and to consult with Nobel laureate Patrick Modiano.

What happened in 1942? And what became of the collection after Nazis seized her great-grandparents’ elegant Parisian apartment? The quest takes Pauline Baer de Perignon from the Occupation of France to the present day as she breaks the silence around the wrenching experiences her family never fully transmitted, and asks what art itself is capable of conveying over time.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Well, this review went through some changes. A lot like me as I read this book. I think the world needs to attend to the huge, stinking pile of denial in the center of Culture Inc. What happened to the art collected by Jews? It was stolen by the Nazis. Those bad Nazis!

...and then what happened? *blank stare*

In Author Baer de Perignon's tale of family, legacies, and fairness denied, you will learn that the reality is...nothing happened. Museums bear extraordinary responsibility for the nothing that happened. They don't want to give their ill-got gains back to the families whose rightful property it is. The whole raison d'etre of "the Museum" (in its broadest cultural-institution sense) is thus opened to serious question.

This isn't a small issue. The 2003-2011 Iraq war resulted in *appalling* levels of art and antiquities being looted or damaged, often destroyed. There is some tut-tutting over this. Not a lot, given the scale and value of it. Why? Because that leads to lots of awkward questions about how "the Museum" got the stuff in the first place. "Provenance" and "spoliation" in other words. Then that opens lots of graves "the Museum" wants to leave closed.

This isn't the first time that this issue has been raised, or wrestled with. Read a book called Goldberg's Angel: An Adventure in the Antiquities Trade (it's excellent, BTW, highly recommend it to you). The topic simmers along, looted antiquities are topics of concern on slow news days around the world. For a minute. They don't rate high on most folks' outrage meters. But the Impressionists and Academicians and Old as well as other Masters aren't talked about in media or entertainment almost at all (pace George Clooney's lukewarm The Monuments Men, which did poorly at the box office). Because people love them, come to see them in their hallowèd homes, are inclined to buy tat with the (profitably licensed) images on them (from "the Museum"'s store). The fact that many were looted from Jews by the Nazis is bad. But whatcha gonna do.

Nothing, for as long as possible, until the heirs of the murdered millions forget (I was *astonished* at the number of people Author Baer de Perignon met who just knew nothing about what had been looted, spoliated, from their ancestors!) or give up. "The Museum" will still be there, after all, taking in cash from ill-got gains they should've given back most of a century ago.

It is a scandal but no one wants to bring up the solution: restore spoliated property to its proper owners, or otherwise their descendants. As I read this book, I realized the case for this is unassailable. But I realized also why I had such trouble writing this review: I dislike the author.

She's quite sarcastic, very judgemental, has a serious oh-poor-me attitude. She snarks, in the text, about people she fawns over in the Acknowledgments. One assumes she thinks these people won't read the actual book.... Her scattered, disorganized research method draws criticism she fobs off as passing...but I promise you that her "mentors" did the real heavy lifting. I read this between the lines, I recalled many author Acknowledgments from when I was an agent that left out lots of realities not to the Author's Taste. And I realized that I support the message of repatriation, restitution, and acknowledging the harm done to generations of people simply because they were Other...but I dislike this messenger.

It's a shallow, personal response, and it shouldn't prevent anyone from picking up this book for its message of ma'at, fairness, justice, and the value of saying "I'm sorry."

Postscript: Sotheby's has auctioned the painting the author worked so hard to reclaim. Watch her conversation with the auction house's staff. In the end, it brought $1.23 million hammer price.

THE ROAD TO URBINO, or let's go to Italy and commit art theft!

THE ROAD TO URBINO
ROMA TEARNE
Gallic Books
$15.95 trade paper, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A story of obsession, love and art set in Tuscany, Sri Lanka and London.

Ras, a Sri Lankan who fled his country as a child following the violent death of his mother and his father's disappearance, has committed a crime. Dogged by his past and unable to come to terms with the killing of his mother, he struggles to make a new life for himself in the UK. Alex has loved Dee since he was 19 but failed to realise that it was a love he wouldn't find again. After Dee's marriage, he too struggles to build a meaningful life for himself. But when Ras' and Alex's lives connect, each man takes a new path culminating for Ras in the theft of a della Franceso painting, while Alex comes ever closer to Dee through tragedy in her life.

Beautifully written, with a strong narrative, The Road to Urbino is the story of two very different men and their love for the women in their lives, set against the backdrop of the heartbreaking horrors of the long-running conflict in Sri Lanka.

I RECEIVED AN ARC FROM THE PUBLISHER. THANK YOU.

My Review: Similar to Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch in initial conditions...an art crime reverberates through the characters' lives, the painting that's stolen has resonances in the story's structure that only reveal themselves the deeper you get...Roma Tearne did not decide to re-write someone else's idea by any means.

When Ras, one of our main characters, escapes his war-torn country after terrible losses, he looks at the UK with the hungry eyes of a victim in search of a savior. The trouble with that, Ras, is that no external being can save you from yourself. He does experience the blessing of a peaceful country's many opportunities, and he takes advantage of them. Job as a museum curator, marriage, a family, a life...all the good stuff. The issue for Ras is, of course, the unhealed horrors of genocide live in his brain. His wife gives him a daughter, as he sees it, and he dotes on the child. Not so much on the mother. Lavish loving attention but nothing for Mama? The inevitable occurs, and the illusion of normal life is ripped apart again.

Lola, his daughter, is a case study in "when bad children happen to loving fathers." Spoiled by his undivided attention and by nature selfish, she is a Hot Mess. Listening to Daddy's stories of the Old Country is a way to get what she wants, but not in the least a way to feel connected to him or to the weird foreign place he originates. Ras isn't a reflective person, at least not at first, but he pips to his essential trapped loneliness at last. What does he do, go to a shrink? No. He goes to Italy! He will tour the countryside and Look At Art.

He does this, all right. He looks at Piero della Francesca's The Flagellation of Christ a bit wrong.

via Wikimedia
Reader, he steals the damned thing. A small-enough painting by religious standards, no more than three feet in any dimension, but...WHAT?! A museum curator steals another museum's painting?!

The shock I felt was slightly cushioned by my delight in Author Tearne's paean to Italy's sheer physical glory. It is no wonder so much great art has come from there, it is so beautiful. As I turned the pages for this second read, I was submerged in a soft golden afternoon's light and gently lapped by the waves of desire anticipating the meal I knew would come soon. (In Italy, a meal will always come soon.) This was the most delightful sensation while I'm trapped inside by COVID. I was even inclined to be forgiving of the absolutely bewildering break from reality that Ras's theft represents.

But that theft is the frame of the story, not the story. Ras, in jail in the UK, begins to speak to his solicitor Elizabeth with the intimacy and urgency of a shrink. Please, he begs, please re-connect me with my daughter! I want her to know her father is not a terrorist! A museum curator, fifty, is being called a terrorist...because he's South Asian. A white man in that cell for that crime would be a troubled citizen, count on it.

Speaking of white men...now enters the story a chap called Alex, the ex-lover of a museum colleague of Ras's. Why he's here you'll have to ask the author, I can't really see what his place is in this story. The only possible excuse I can find for Alex to exist is that he reinforces the idea that middle-aged men long for a woman. And this is where something important (leaving aside its overwhelming heteronormativity) hit me.

A talented woman writing a novel about men in crisis gives one unpleasant woman, Lola, all the ladies' speaking parts; from Elizabeth we hear stage prompts, meant to cue a dried-up actor to resume his speech. The middle-aged man at the center of it all is South Asian, at least, but honestly I can't imagine a book less likely to pass the Bechdel test. I don't think any woman speaks to another woman at all, let alone not about a man, but that's not something I was carefully looking out for.

I've mentioned before that I need to feel a character's trajectory has changed for a reading experience to fully satisfy me. This story's characters are all in mid-trajectory when we leave them, so I was a bit grumpus about that; I did finally settle myself because the fact is they're all launched in new directions. Not at all sure they'll stay on them, but they're set into motion and that's good enough for me.

In general terms, I'm not inclined to pick up books like this. I got it during my COVID infection and couldn't really focus on it. Since my backlog of unreviewed books is shocking, I needed to give it a bit of a brush-up to remind myself of the story's tenor and the characters' affects. The sneakily critical of racism nature of the story was a definite plus. The somewhat flat crime that is committed is only so because there's really just no conceivable reason for it to have happened. If I read this as a news report, I'd be eaten alive with curiosity to now WHY it occurred, probably to the point of calling the news outlet and demanding they assign an investigative reporter to ferret out the goodies.

Sadly, that doesn't occur and thus I'm left with a two-and-a-half star read that earns itself an extra star for its blissful evocation of Italy's delights. I enjoyed the read enough to review it; I'd recommend borrowing, not buying, the book if you are tempted.

Book-A-Day #16: THE GAUGUIN CONNECTION, a good beach read

THE GAUGUIN CONNECTION (Genevieve Lenard Art Crimes #1)
ESTELLE RYAN
Kindle original edition (non-affiliate Amazon link)
FREE! what are you waiting for?!

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Murdered artists. Masterful forgeries.
Art crime at its worst.

A straightforward murder investigation quickly turns into a quagmire of stolen Eurocorps weapons, a money-laundering charity, forged art and high-ranking EU officials abusing their power.

As an insurance investigator and world renowned expert in nonverbal communication, Dr Genevieve Lenard faces the daily challenge of living a successful, independent life. Particularly because she has to deal with her high functioning Autism. Nothing - not her studies, her high IQ or her astounding analytical skills - prepared her for the changes about to take place in her life.

It started as a favour to help her boss' acerbic friend look into the murder of a young artist, but soon it proves to be far more complex. Forced out of her predictable routines, safe environment and limited social interaction, Genevieve is thrown into exploring the meaning of friendship, expanding her social definitions, and for the first time in her life be part of a team in a race to stop more artists from being murdered.

My Review: The Doubleday UK meme, a book a day for July 2014, is the goad I'm using to get through my snit-based unwritten reviews. Today's prompt is to discuss a beach read, a novel perfect for an afternoon under a beach umbrella sipping drinks with silly names brought by hotties clad in as few clothes as local law allows.

Ahem. Well. Isn't that how everyone spends a day at the beach?

The Gauguin Connection has many sterling qualities, like a wonderful main character, and a completely beguiling cast of supporting characters. (I convinced my Gentleman Caller to read this by saying he reminded me of Vinnie. To my relief, he found that touching and endearing, "worth reading a stupid mystery novel for.")

What makes this such a good beach read is simply that: The interplay of the characters. Dr Lenard isn't consistently drawn, the art-crime plot seems very slapdash to me, and so on and so on. All those quibbles aside, I loved these characters and wanted to sit quietly in the room while they did what they do. Which is mostly sit around computers in different rooms and bicker amusingly.

I mean to tell you, though, if savoring the interplay of high-level snark with pomposity, the collision of wit with literal-mindedness, doesn't sound compelling to you, horseman, pass on. I found it deeply funny at times, and snortingly amusing all the time. So download it onto your Kindle for free, put the Kindle in a quart-sized Ziploc, seal it, and head for the sand. Tip the hottie well, and in advance, for the best drinks service. Relax into bliss with the wacky crew of Strasbourg (!)-based art crime solvers.