A fabulous "lost masterpiece" becomes the ultimate prize for an art historian whose ambition consumes everyone around her, an angry young painter with a plan for revenge on the art establishment, and a desperate gallery owner who may have double-crossed his own life away...
AMAZON.COM BOOK DESCRIPTION
Early Follett. Short and easy to read. Worth it.
In his long and illustrious career, which, God willing, is hardly over, Ken Follett has written an incredible number of highly successful novels and he has long been among my favorite authors. So, I was delighted to acquire a copy of his very first debut novel originally published in Great Britain some 44 years ago under the pseudonym Zachary Stone. Unlike most of his, later far more successful works published under his own name, The Modigliani Scandal is a relatively short novel (just over 200 pages) that he himself describes (in the introduction cited below) as:
a lighthearted crime story in which an assortment of people, mostly young, get up to a variety capers, none of which turns out quite as expected.
Almost 10 years after the original publication of this book, Follett has it republished under his own name with an introduction in which the author admits that he wrote this book with some serious underlying intent which, somewhat to his chagrin at the time, seems to have been completely missed by the novel's earliest critics. With this in mind, the now more enlightened reader as he reads the story can easily spot the author's key theme that most of the people in the business of art selling and collecting could care less about the true value of artists and therefore, are quite willing to exploit them as most such dealers true interests lie only in how much money they can make from the results of the artists' hard work and rare talents.
I found this to be a rather enjoyable read though in my mind Follett may have gotten a bit too clever for his own good in the telling of the self-described "lighthearted crime story".
Good book. Typical Follett.
From the jacket...."A bright young art student follows the trail of an undiscovered masterpiece by Modigliani...Two disgruntled artists concoct a scheme to expose the hypocrisy of the art world...The ambitious owner of a new gallery will stop at nothing to assure the success of his enterprise. Master plotter Ken Follett brings all these forces together in this bestselling thriller - an exquisite blending of suspense, intrique and blind ambition. 2 cassettes - approx 3 hours listening.
