{"id":4916,"date":"2023-04-05T06:50:55","date_gmt":"2023-04-05T13:50:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=4916"},"modified":"2023-04-05T06:50:55","modified_gmt":"2023-04-05T13:50:55","slug":"trish-esden-a-wealth-of-deception","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/trish-esden-a-wealth-of-deception\/","title":{"rendered":"Trish Esden: A Wealth of Deception"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I truly enjoyed this book, the second in a series featuring antiques dealer Edie Brown, whose business is on the brink of collapse.\u00a0 Her mother is in jail for art fraud and Edie is a convicted felon herself, having (unintentionally) sold stolen art to an undercover agent.\u00a0 This series set up happens in book one, The Art of the Decoy<\/em> (2022).\u00a0 I was able to jump right in with little trouble, though I do want to go back and read the first book.<\/p>\n

The book opens with a description of what it means to be an \u201coutsider\u201d artist (think Grandma Moses).\u00a0 For the novel, Esden creates an outsider artist named Vespa, an elderly woman whose disturbing, complicated collages have taken the art world by storm.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Annie is clearing out her mother\u2019s house, and insists the work is her brother\u2019s \u201ccraft project.\u201d<\/p>\n

Edie isn\u2019t so sure, and she and her uncle leave with a few pieces to sell but with many questions.\u00a0 More urgently, back at the shop-slash-home, the septic tank in the back yard has overflowed and Edie and the business simply don\u2019t have the necessary funds to repair and replace it.\u00a0 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\u2019s wall.<\/p>\n

Part of Edie and Tuck\u2019s team is a young woman named Kala, who basically works for room and board and is luckily something of a tech genius.\u00a0 Her research skills prove invaluable. As Edie investigates Vespa\u2019s origins as well as the life story of Annie\u2019s brother, a brain damaged man who lives in a nursing facility, she begins to uncover what she thinks might be the truth.<\/p>\n

The deaths that occur in this novel are in the past, but as the story progresses there\u2019s no doubt someone is after Edie as several different events take place.\u00a0 However, it is truly a mystery novel, as Edie uses her skills as an antique and art expert \u2013 calling on other experts when needed \u2013 to solve this case and to figure out exactly what\u2019s going on with Vespa\u2019s collages.\u00a0 Esden has put together a complex and fascinating story with the backdrop of the art market in all its many incarnations, from Christie\u2019s to NFTs to the type of local antiques store owned by Edie and her family.<\/p>\n

This novel has a light, fun tone that\u2019s underpinned with a bit of darkness, moving the book into what I think of as a \u201chard\u201d cozy \u2013 there are cozy elements, but many of the themes aren\u2019t so cozy.\u00a0 (Some examples of \u201chard\u201d 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.\u00a0 This was a fun read, making me eager for more in this series. \u2013 Robin Agnew <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I truly enjoyed this book, the second in a series featuring antiques dealer Edie Brown, whose business is on the brink of collapse.\u00a0 Her mother is in jail for art fraud and Edie is a convicted felon herself, having (unintentionally) sold stolen art to an undercover agent.\u00a0 This series set up happens in book one, … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1137,724,943,1140,1139,1138,1136],"class_list":["post-4916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-a-wealth-of-deception","tag-antiques","tag-crooked-lane-books","tag-edie-brown","tag-outsider-art","tag-scandal-mountain","tag-trish-esden"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4916"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4916\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4917,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4916\/revisions\/4917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}