Art Kills

Art is having a wild affair with murder in this breathtaking, inventive tale from the best-selling author of the exotic White Ninja and chilling Second Skin. Racing from the marbled precincts of New York's uptown museum scene to the fashionable galleries and lofts of Soho to a gated Mafia mansion on the platinum coast of Long Island, at top speed this Lustbader novella takes appraiser Tess Chase, a no-nonsense woman with a taste for martial as well as fine arts, in pursuit of a long-lost painting by the Renaissance master Raphael. It also entangles her in a case of deadly sibling rivalry between the heirs to the empire of the East Coast crime boss Rocco Bravanno as it divides Tess's loyalties between the handsome, charismatic Anthony and his stunning sister, Jackie, both of whom come by their lust for art and palate for murder naturally. Uncovering a web of conspiracy and shifting alliances, Tess strives both to rescue the painting from its abductors and to save the passionately unhappy Jackie from a miserable marriage to a man with betrayal in his blood. More than a Raphael is at stake in this murderous tale of envy and revenge. Only Tess has yet to learn who the real traitor is. And ignorance is not bliss.