Trish Esden

I truly enjoyed this book, the second in a series featuring antiques dealer Edie Brown, whose business is on the brink of collapse.  Her mother is in jail for art fraud and Edie is a convicted felon herself, having (unintentionally) sold stolen art to an undercover agent.  This series set up happens in book one, The Art of the Decoy (2022).  I was able to jump right in with little trouble, though I do want to go back and read the first book.

The book opens with a description of what it means to be an “outsider” artist (think Grandma Moses).  For the novel, Esden creates an outsider artist named Vespa, an elderly woman whose disturbing, complicated collages have taken the art world by storm.  When Edie and her uncle Tuck head over to do an appraisal and purchase a few items from a woman named Annie, Edie is surprised to see what she thinks in an original Vespa on the wall.  Annie is clearing out her mother’s house, and insists the work is her brother’s “craft project.” read more