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.”
Edie isn’t so sure, and she and her uncle leave with a few pieces to sell but with many questions. More urgently, back at the shop-slash-home, the septic tank in the back yard has overflowed and Edie and the business simply don’t have the necessary funds to repair and replace it. One of the threads in the book is just wondering how Edie will keep her antiques business afloat, but the strongest thread is the mystery of the collage on Annie’s wall.
Part of Edie and Tuck’s team is a young woman named Kala, who basically works for room and board and is luckily something of a tech genius. Her research skills prove invaluable. As Edie investigates Vespa’s origins as well as the life story of Annie’s brother, a brain damaged man who lives in a nursing facility, she begins to uncover what she thinks might be the truth.
The deaths that occur in this novel are in the past, but as the story progresses there’s no doubt someone is after Edie as several different events take place. However, it is truly a mystery novel, as Edie uses her skills as an antique and art expert – calling on other experts when needed – to solve this case and to figure out exactly what’s going on with Vespa’s collages. Esden has put together a complex and fascinating story with the backdrop of the art market in all its many incarnations, from Christie’s to NFTs to the type of local antiques store owned by Edie and her family.
This novel has a light, fun tone that’s underpinned with a bit of darkness, moving the book into what I think of as a “hard” cozy – there are cozy elements, but many of the themes aren’t so cozy. (Some examples of “hard” cozy writers would include Ellen Hart, Julia Spencer-Fleming, Paula Munier and Paige Shelton with her Alaska series). The characters are well delineated and interesting, and I learned a bit more about art and a good way to look at and approach a work of art, thanks to a call Edie has with her mother about three quarters of the way through the novel. This was a fun read, making me eager for more in this series. – Robin Agnew