The Art Forger by B.A. Shapiro

This book was recommended to me by a friend, and within the first few chapters I was hooked.  The book is based on white collar crime which isn't written about as often because it doesn't always viewed as exciting.  However, as someone addicted to the show White Collar (my cat is even named Mozzie) white collar crime is just as sexy and crazy as any murder mystery.

The book is about Claire Roth, an artist who works for Repo.com painting reproductions.  Essentially, she is a forger for a living (although legally it's a copy because it's never presented as a the real painting).  Because of this job, she has skills that go beyond painting.  She can age items and make them seem as close to the original as possible.  She is a talented artist but is a pariah in the art world due to an affair she had with her professor in the past, Isaac Cullion, and the after effects.  She painted one of his most famous paintings to get him through a hard time, and he takes the credit.  While Claire is trying to prove that she painted the art, Isaac becomes depressed and eventually commits suicide.  She was blamed as being the one to cause his depression by Isaac's wife Martha, and everyone in the art world comes to hate her.  So when Aiden Markel, owner of the famous gallery Markel G, approaches her to give her a show, she is all ears.  Despite the fact she will need to forge a painting to get there.  The painting is one of the original Degas works that was stolen from the Gardner museum.  Aiden's plan is to have Claire forge it, sell the forgery, then donate the original back to the museum.  The person who bought the forgery wouldn't be able to come forward without claiming to have attempted to buy the stolen painting, Aiden would make money on the deal to help his gallery, and in return for Claire's help he would give her a show in his gallery.  Seemingly, it's a win for everyone, until things go south.  Then Claire is hurrying to solve the original robbery in order to save Aiden.

The book moved VERY quickly.  I loved how detailed the author was in the actual work behind the forgery (I feel like I now have the skills to forge a painting) and how well she wrote Claire as an artist that gets absorbed in her work.  Despite the fact that Claire is spending most of the book painting, it still moves at a pace that keeps the reader involved.  The quick pace is due to the author's writing style of switching back and forth between the past and the present.  The past is revealed to us (both Claire's past and the Degas painting's past) an excerpt at a time, so even if things were moving slowly in the present you couldn't stop reading.  I highly recommend this book to anyone!!  Great read!

<3, jacq