real heist fictionalized.

Merry Christmas Eve!

Novelist B. A. Shapiro bases her latest, The Art Forger, around the true tale of the 1990 theft of thirteen works of art from the Stewart-Gardner Museum in Boston. In this realistic-fiction, he focuses on one painting in particular, the Degas masterpiece "After the Bath"

In the novel, we immediately enter the world of art museums, galleries, forgeries, and stolen art. To keep us non-art history majors interested, Shapiro includes enough hint of mystery and danger to keep us excited, and constantly worried about the fate of the main character, a struggling artist named Claire.

Claire Roth is an artist that has been involved in an art work scandal and has found herself blackballed in the artistic world. She is forced into reproducing famous paintings to make a living. This career choice gives her an opportunity to salvage her reputation when she is offered the chance to copy a stolen Degas painting. Shapiro uses flashbacks very effectively. In bits and pieces we learn what happened to Claire three years ago and what led to her current situation. As that story unfolds, it seems that history may be repeating itself.


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