10 Best Mystery Books Set in the World of Art!
Hey, artistic sleuths! Does the fusion of vibrant paint strokes, captivating sculptures, and clandestine mysteries have you on the edge of your favorite paint-splattered armchair? Well, you're not alone! There's nothing quite like the allure of a mystery novel set in the provocative world of art, where every brush stroke could conceal a clue and every gallery opening hides a deadly secret.
We've compiled a list of the 10 best mystery novels that marry the enchanting world of art with the delicious suspense of a whodunit. These masterpieces are no mere 'still life'. You are about to plunge into twisted tales where stolen paintings, murdered artists, art forgery, and shady art dealers intermingle with shrewd detectives and unsuspecting art enthusiasts. And guess what? You're going to love it!
Whether you're an art aficionado, a lover of mystery, or if you just get a kick out of the occasional art heist, these ten books will satisfy your craving. So pull up a chair, grab some popcorn (or perhaps a more sophisticated snack), and prepare to delve into the clandestine underbelly of the art world, where something is always more than it appears to be. Hold on to your berets, folks. It's about to get real mysterious!
『The Burglar Who Painted Like Mondrian』
It's not that used bookstore owner and part-time burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr believes the less legal of his two professions is particularly ethical. (It is, however, a rush, and he is very good at it.) He just thinks it's unfair to face a prison term for his legitimate activities. After appraising the worth of a rich man's library -- conveniently leaving his fingerprints everywhere in the process -- Bernie finds he's the cops' prime suspect when his client is murdered. Someone has framed Bernie Rhodenbarr better than they do it at the Whitney. And if he wants to get out of this corner he's been masterfully painted into, he'll have to get to the bottom of a rather artful -- if multiply murderous -- scam.
Author | Lawrence Block |
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Price | $8.99 |
Publisher | Harper Collins |
Release Date | Oct 13, 2009 |
Source | Google Books |
『Still Life』
In a small town in Quebec a women supposedly loved by her community is found in the woods, murdered. Chief Inspector Armand Gamache looks for the small clues which will point him to the killer.
Author | Louise Penny |
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Price | unknown |
Publisher | Macmillan |
Release Date | Sep 30, 2008 |
Source | Google Books |
『The Art Forger』
Don't miss B. A. Shapiro's new novel, The Collector's Apprentice, available now! “[A] highly entertaining literary thriller about fine art and foolish choices.” —Parade “[A] nimble mystery.” —The New York Times Book Review “Gripping.” —O, The Oprah Magazine Almost twenty-five years after the infamous art heist at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum—still the largest unsolved art theft in history—one of the stolen Degas paintings is delivered to the Boston studio of a young artist. Claire Roth has entered into a Faustian bargain with a powerful gallery owner by agreeing to forge the Degas in exchange for a one-woman show in his renowned gallery. But as she begins her work, she starts to suspect that this long-missing masterpiece—the very one that had been hanging at the Gardner for one hundred years—may itself be a forgery. The Art Forger is a thrilling novel about seeing—and not seeing—the secrets that lie beneath the canvas.
Author | B. A. Shapiro |
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Price | unknown |
Publisher | Algonquin Books |
Release Date | May 21, 2013 |
Source | Google Books |
『The Da Vinci Code』
Harvard professor Robert Langdon receives an urgent late-night phone call while on business in Paris: the elderly curator of the Louvre, Jacques Sauni're, has been brutally murdered inside the museum. Alongside the body, police have found a series of baffling codes. As Langdon and a gifted French cryptologist, Sophie Neveu, begin to sort through the bizarre riddles, they are stunned to find a trail that leads to the works of Leonardo Da Vinci - and suggests the answer to a mystery that stretches deep into the vault of history. Langdon suspects the late curator was involved in the Priory of Sion - a centuries old secret society - and has sacrificed his life to protect the Priory's most sacred trust: the location of a vastly important religious relic hidden for centuries. But it now appears that Opus Dei, a clandestine sect that has long plotted to seize the Prirory's secret, has now made its move. Unless Langdon and Neveu can decipher the labyrinthine code and quickly assemble the pieces of the puzzle, the Priory's secret - and a stunning historical truth - will be lost forever. Breaking the mould of traditional suspense novels, The DA VINCI CODE is simultaneously lightning-paced, intelligent and intricately layered with remarkable research and detail. And in this exclusive edition Dan Brown allows the reader behind the scenes of the novel which now incorporates over 150 photographs and illustrations throughout the text showing the rich historical tapestry from which he drew his inspiration. The visual sources which provide both the backdrop and the stimulus for the novel's action are revealed for the first time and uniquely complement the reading experience.
Author | Dan Brown |
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Price | unknown |
Publisher | Random House |
Release Date | Jan 01, 2004 |
Source | Google Books |
『Death of a Ghost』
An artist’s legacy lives on—through murder in this Albert Campion mystery masterpiece from “one of the finest Golden-Age crime novelists” (The Sunday Telegraph). To vex his rival from the grave, a famous artist has left twelve paintings to be sold after his death. Each year, one painting is revealed to kick off London’s art season. But this release party—bringing family, friends, critics, and collectors together—devolves into scandal. A power outage leaves everyone in the dark, and when the lights come back on, a man lies dead—stabbed through the heart with bejeweled scissors. Family friend Albert Campion is present during the deadly crime. The too obvious suspect is the artist’s granddaughter, Linda Lafcadio, who was engaged to the victim until he brought back a model from Italy and married her. Linda didn’t take his suggestion of a ménage à trois well, to say the least. But was she angry enough to kill him? Campion thinks not. He’s actually quite sure he knows who did the dastardly deed, but there’s no evidence to prove it. And though he’s one step behind a diabolical killer, Campion just might be next on the list of victims . . . “Uncommon merit in every direction . . . honestly, you can’t go wrong with Death of a Ghost.” —Boston Evening Transcript Praise for Margery Allingham “Margery Allingham stands out like a shining light.” —Agatha Christie “The best of mystery writers.” —The New Yorker “Allingham was a rare and precious talent.” —The Washington Post “Don’t start reading these books unless you are confident that you can handle addiction.” —The Independent
Author | Margery Allingham |
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Price | $15.99 |
Publisher | Open Road Media |
Release Date | Jun 13, 2023 |
Source | Google Books |
『Feint of Art:』
At ten, painting a perfect Mona Lisa made Annie Kincaid a prodigy. A similar copy at seventeen made her a crook. Lesson learned: genuine art is priceless, and forgery gets you arrested. Now Annie puts her artistic talents to honest use as a faux finisher in San Francisco. But her past may not be painted over as well as she thought… Annie’s got bad news for her ex-boyfriend, curator Ernst Pettigrew: the snooty Brock Museum’s new fifteen-million-dollar Caravaggio painting is as fake as a three-dollar bill. And the same night Annie makes her shattering appraisal, the janitor on duty is killed—and Ernst disappears. To top it all off, a well-known art dealer has absconded with multiple Old Master drawings, leaving yet more forgeries in their places. Finding the originals—and pocketing the reward money—will get Annie’s new landlord off her back. But it could also draw her into the underworld of fakes and forgers she swore she’d left behind, starting with a close encounter with a changeable but charming art thief…
Author | Hailey Lind/Juliet Blackwell |
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Price | $3.99 |
Publisher | Penguin |
Release Date | Jan 03, 2006 |
Source | Google Books |
『The Raphael Affair』
From the author of the bestselling "An Instance of the Fingerpost" comes a special trade edition of the first novel in an ingenious new Art History mystery series. When a long-lost Raphael resurfaces, it triggers a chain of events from vandalism to murder. As English art scholar Jonathan Argyll investigates, he ends up on the run for the truth and for his very life.
Author | Iain Pears |
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Price | unknown |
Publisher | Berkley |
Release Date | Feb 01, 2001 |
Source | Google Books |
『The Art Thief』
The disappearance of a priceless Caravaggio in Rome and the famous 'White on White' by Russian painter Kasimir Malevich in Paris heralds the start of a series of seemingly unconnected art crimes across Europe. Fitting the pieces together as they follow a trail of bluffs and double-bluffs, bizarre clues and intellectual puzzles, Inspector Jean-JacquesBizot in Paris and Harry Wickenden of Scotland Yardcome to realize that what at first appears a spate of random thefts is all part of a single master plan, and that they are being led ever deeper into a baffling conspiracy. This fiendishly clever debut thriller takes us behind the scenes of the elite fine art world of auction houses, academia and museums to offer a fascinating view of art history, witty, fast-paced dialogue and an ever-surprising plot that twists its way from Rome to Paris to London and back again.
Author | Noah Charney |
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Price | unknown |
Publisher | Simon and Schuster |
Release Date | Sep 04, 2008 |
Source | Google Books |
『The Heist』
A fallen spy A missing masterpiece A daring mission The Heist Legendary spy and art restorer Gabriel Allon is in Venice repairing an altarpiece by Veronese when he receives an urgent summons from the Italian police. The eccentric London art dealer Julian Isherwood has stumbled upon a chilling murder scene in Lake Como, and is being held as a suspect. To save his friend, Gabriel must track down the real killers and then perform one simple task: find the most famous missing painting in the world. Sometimes the best way to find a stolen masterpiece is to steal another one. . . . The dead man is a fallen British spy with a secret: he has been trafficking in stolen artworks and selling them to a mysterious collector. Among those paintings is the world's most iconic missing masterpiece: Caravaggio's glorious Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence. Gabriel embarks on a daring gambit to recover the Caravaggio and learn the identity of the collector. His search will take him on an exhilarating hunt—from the shimmering boulevards of Paris and London to the gritty criminal underworlds of Marseilles and Corsica, and finally to a small private bank in Austria where a dangerous man stands guard over the ill-gotten wealth of a brutal dictator. At his side is a brave young woman who survived one of the worst massacres of the twentieth century. Now, with Gabriel's help, she will be given a chance to strike a blow against a dynasty that destroyed her family. Elegant, sophisticated, and entertaining, The Heist is a must-read thriller—a page-turning tale of intrigue that demonstrates once again why Daniel Silva is called a "world-class practitioner of spy fiction" (Washington Post).
Author | Daniel Silva |
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Price | unknown |
Publisher | Harper |
Release Date | Jul 15, 2014 |
Source | Google Books |
『Provenance』
"This volume of essays offers new arguments regarding the significance of the social biography of art and the transformative power of ownership. It realigns the traditional art-historical paradigm that focuses on the moment of an object's origin and instead considers the longue durée of ownership. Whereas the term provenance may call to mind little more than a list of owners or the legal questions raised by competing entitlement claims, the essays in this book demonstrate that a nuanced approach recuperates important, even dramatic, aspects of the history of art. The authors present a broad perspective on provenance, investigating examples from Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas, and from ancient archaeology to conceptual art. They explore how stories of ownership are attached to objects, analyze important distinctions between provenance and provenience, and show how provenance can be monetized, politicized, suppressed, or otherwise instrumentalized."--Page 4 of cover.
Author | Gail Feigenbaum/Inge Jackson Reist |
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Price | unknown |
Publisher | Getty Publications |
Release Date | Jan 01, 2012 |
Source | Google Books |
Art and mystery, a concoction that invites intrigue, secrecy, and a cascade of emotions. Isn't there something intoxicating about walking into an art gallery, staring at a masterpiece, and wondering, 'what is the hidden story behind this canvas?' The mystery books, set in the world of art, that we compiled for you consume you with this exact cocktail of curiosity and fascination. They throw light into the back alleys of genius minds and the hidden layers of incredible art pieces, causing you to second-guess every stroke and shade. Jaw-clenching suspense, mesmerizing arts, and characters as colorful as a palette, these books have it all. So next time you sit down with a cup of coffee and a thrilling mystery novel, dive into the intoxicating world of art too. It's like being a part of an exclusive secret society, where every piece of art is a phone booth that opens up into a labyrinth of a thrilling chase. Wrap up in a cozy blanket, let the rain patter against your window, and get lost in the absorbing world of art mysteries! Don't forget, the true art of a mystery novel is when it bestows upon you the joy of aiding the detective in their quest. Happy Reading!
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