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[A Dangerous Talent] by Charlotte & Aaron Elkins
Alix London Series Book #1
4 stars
Alix London has a promising career as an art consultant, a sumptuous condo in Seattle’s toniest neighborhood, a gorgeous figure, and a presence that exudes Ivy League breeding and old money. She has it all…or does she? Only Alix knows that the image she presents to the world is a carefully constructed mirage that veils an embarrassing truth. A brilliant, once-promising art student, the daughter of a prominent New York art conservator, her world was left in ruins when her father went to prison for art forgery. Now a Harvard dropout with an emptied bank account, she is languishing in a career that has produced little more than a lucky house-sitting gig. But all of that changes when Alix meets Christine Lemay, a novice art collector with money to burn and a hot tip on a recently discovered painting by American master Georgia O’Keeffe. Chris hires Alix to perform the authentication, an assignment that finally could launch Alix into the big leagues. But soon after her arrival in Santa Fe, she finds herself tangled up in a web of forgery, deceit—and murder. Anxious to avoid becoming the next victim, she teams up with FBI Special Agent Ted Ellesworth—and gets a little unlikely help from her roguish father—to uncover the truth behind the painting and those who would kill to have it. Sharp, witty, and devilishly fun, The art world is a complete mystery to me. I could no more tell you what the philosophy is behind an artists work than I could build a rocket...so this mystery about the art world was a good and challenging read for me. I found the book to generally be an easy reading mystery but was not as challenging or tightly written as the mysteries I normally read. The character of Alix London was intelligent and very likable but I was weary of the F.B.I. agent at first. He constantly insisted that Alix was a prime suspect in the murder of an art gallery owner and is probably a forger herself in spite of the fact there was not one shred of evidence to support this assumption. Of course they dislike and distrust each other because they are actually attracted to each other: a bit too much romance for me. The identity of the murderer becomes obvious early in the book, It would have been better if that had been reserved for later...but overall it was a very worthwhile read.
