The Art Forger by B.A. Shapiro
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The premise of this book: an actual unsolved art heist being solved by a professional art copier, is pretty interesting.

Note: evidently copying art isn't illegal, nor is it illegal to sell copied art, it's just illegal to sell it claiming that it's original.

However, the story itself was a little sloppy. It feels very much like a first novel (which I think it is). The verb tenses would change mid-paragraph. Not often, but enough to be annoying. Claire (the protagonist) would say things like, I'm not a dupe, but then she'd do something where I'd just want to shake some sense into her. She and her art dealer both say they've fallen in love with each other, but it doesn't feel like love. It feels like they're just sleeping together. In the beginning of the book, you're introduced to a bunch of Claire's friends, but most of them are really just pointless characters. I think the author was trying to give Claire a believable number of friends, but had nothing for them to do. And Claire does this whole volunteer thing at a juvenile detention facility that really doesn't serve much purpose, unless it's supposed to be foreshadowing or ironic juxtapositioning or something, but it's really just something random for Claire to do. And the dialogue was stilted in places.

However, all of that being said, the premise of the book was interesting enough to carry it, and all-in-all it was an enjoyable read.

View all my reviews