The Art Forger by Barbara Shapiro

My Rating:  4.6

On March 18, 1990, thirteen works of art today worth over $500 million were stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. It remains the largest unsolved art heist in history, and Claire Roth, a struggling young artist, is about to discover that there’s more to this crime than meets the eye.  This is a mystery with a dash of love story and it all revolves around the art world.  I loved the blend of fact and fiction as well as the language and learning of the art world.  All of the techniques of stripping the painting to the canvas, layering the painting, drying the glazes by baking them and so many other wonderful descriptions had me not only fascinated but, wishing that I painted.

 If the prose and characters were stronger, this could easily have been a 5 star book as it was such an enjoyable read
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