An editor at Art News magazine, I’m posing today as Ellie Silverman, budding artist studying in Paris and quartered in the back room at Madame Denise Fontaine’s upscale tattoo parlor on rue de Ponthieu. I’m dressed in a loose-fitting sweater, maxi skirt and high-top sneakers—my concept of low-key Bohemian. The John Lennon-type glasses purchased through Amazon, an afterthought. My dear friend Madame D, nonagenarian nonpareil, is in her go-to black mourning attire reminiscent of Whistler’s mother. She sits in her wheelchair looking conveniently vulnerable. “My frailty serves as a disguise without my need to dress up,” she says. “People have a habit of conflating frailty with witlessness. To boot, Rouge Tatuage, has a history of having been a fine prints shop. What better front for an eccentric old woman determined to pull off the role of shady art dealer?”

I flew from New York City to Paris yesterday so that Madame D and I would be arriving together in Geneva to bolster the cover story we’d concocted for today’s sting operation. A limo was waiting for us at the Geneva Airport when we arrived at 9:30 a.m. Fifteen minutes later we were pulling into the industrial stretch monopolized by the huge warehouse complex—Geneva Freeport. Two uniformed female guards were waiting for us in a cordoned-off parking area. I was expecting to undergo a thorough security check. Instead, after the limo driver had set up Madame D’s wheelchair and helped her into it, the guards probed the contents of her satchel and my slouchy Hobo. The driver, his job done, drove off.

The day was aiming to please. Though the sunlight reigned supreme, unobstructed by natural growth on this sprawling terrain, its purpose appeared to be sacrificial—to spend itself melting these fortress walls and freeing the treasures within to public view. The dull gray façades glowed with the sun’s gallant attempt to warm the compound’s cold heart, but the mica particles or whatever caused the persuasive glow did nothing, in the end, to change reality. This was an unwelcoming place, meant to keep the public out. How different from the temples of art, their exterior displays designed to draw the public in—the Louvre, with its grand colonnade; the Metropolitan, with its sculpture-adorned niches; the Prado, with its bronze statue of artist Diego Velázquez greeting visitors at the main gate.

I was harboring resentment for the place as I followed behind the guards and steered Madame D toward one of its drab entrances. The mood deepened as we were led through halls lined with rows and rows of wooden crates containing who-knows what imprisoned creations. To think that this monument to secrecy contained over a million artworks estimated at over 100 billion dollars. Kudos to Madame D for keeping to herself the florid protests I could only imagine were at the tip of her tongue.

An elevator ride took us to the third floor, where we were led to an unmarked metal door. One of the guards tapped something on her cellphone. The massive door swung open, and a man with lizard eyes waved us in like an impatient garage attendant.

My breath caught at the sudden burst of color. It was like coming upon a hidden garden. The cut pile carpeting the color of grass; the plush chairs in rose and lavender; the walls, a soft lilac, from which the magnificent paintings beamed forth in competitive glory. Four men other than the host were standing about, hardly distracting from the stunning effect—but that was about to change.

Dying for Monet, Art History Mystery Book 5
Genre: Traditional Mystery
Release: June 2024
Format: Print, Digital
Purchase Link

A gala evening auction at Laszlo’s, an upstart auction house in New York City, is in progress. Without notice, a much sought-after Impressionist painting is withdrawn from the block. Moments later, its broker is found dead at the foot of an imposing statue in Laszlo’s courtyard.

Amateur sleuths Erika Shawn and Harrison Wheatley are once again drawn into an investigation involving an art-related homicide, this time sharing an unnerving coincidence with violent crimes occurring abroad.

As Harrison searches for clues in the archives at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, Erika is on a stakeout in Brooklyn Heights gathering information on the owner of the hijacked still life. After Harrison experiences a disastrous encounter in London, he returns home, where he and Erika, along with a few of their usual cohorts, find themselves ever more deeply at odds with the movers and shakers on the dark side of fine arts commerce.

Meet the author
Claudia Riess has worked in the editorial departments of The New Yorker and Holt, Rinehart and Winston, and has edited several art history monographs. Stolen Light, the first book in her art history mystery series, was chosen by Vassar’s Latin American history professor for distribution to the college’s people-to-people trips to Cuba. To Kingdom Come, the fourth, will be added to the syllabus of a survey course on West and Central African Art at a prominent Midwestern university. Claudia has written a number of articles for Mystery Readers Journal, Women’s National Book Association, the Sisters in Crime Bloodletter, and Mystery Scene magazine. She has been featured on a variety of podcast and Zoom events. To read more about the author and her work, visit claudiariessbooks.com. To contact her, email claudiariess.w@gmail.com.