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Rating: 
Summary: Read the review
Review: I loved this book! Great story, great characters, and
the pacing of it just never lets up. Furthermore
it avoids the nauseating politically correct propaganda
junk that mars so many mysteries and action stories
in today's world; ones where women perform feats
of daring physical, psychological, and intellectual stunts
(while the men waffle around like flawed, clueless bozos)
that in real life just don't happen. If you want deep characterizations and
all
that, go back and reread Shakespeare. This book
plays out almost like a very satisfying, high quality movie.
I'd definitely be willing to seek out and read other works by this author in
the
future. Highly recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: Passes the time, but it's not Ian Pears
Review: This book has silly mistakes of reference, stodgy exposition about the art that reads like it was intended for a textbook, and a pretty predictable plot. It's a police procedural (not a mystery) and the procedure is generally ok, but none of the characters is well developed. It's passingly interesting for an airplane, but not much more. Try Instance of the Finger Post instead.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent mystery set in the art world
Review: While the plot is interesting, the writing is weak and the character development limited. The author tries to keep us entertained by moving the characters from New York to London to Lake Como, but the interesting travels don't replace good character development. A fun read...that's about it.
Rating: 
Summary: Airport reading at best
Review: Wow, this book is dreadful. The prose is painfully bad, the dialogue is excruciating, the characterization falls flat, and the plot loses any tenuous claim to credibility unless the reader is willing to assume that each character is stupider than the last.Occasionally such a book can be rescued by an interesting detective. Alas, I have no idea whether this is one of them; because although this book is billed as an Inspector Jack Oxby novel, when I finally gave up reading on page 300 of a 378-page book, Inspector Oxby had made one brief appearance and garnered two passing references. I assume he actually does take part in the plot at some point, but I can't vouch for it. The cover blurb says "Fans of Ian Pears' art mysteries will enjoy the lavish detail." Fans of Ian Pears would do well to reread Ian Pears and stay well away from this charmless hash.
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