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A review by spinstah
The Art Forger by B.A. Shapiro

5.0

This was great! It's a combination of a mystery and historical fiction, set in Boston and featuring the theft from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. I devoured it and really enjoyed all the mentions of various places around the city. The story revolves around a young painter who's asked to paint a forgery of one of the works stolen from the Gardner, and what happens after she does. She is "a woman with a past," as they say, and her past is slowly brought to light through a handful of flashback chapters interspersed through the book. I'm not entirely sure that was necessary - the book could have opened with that stuff and then flashed forward to the present day - but the timing of when those chapters were placed worked well. As you can imagine, there are lots of detailed description of the process of creating a painting, and how to detect a forgery, which I found interesting. I enjoyed this and recommend it, particularly if you've been to the Gardner.