Harriet Klausner's Review Archive
The Metropolitan Museum of Art curators are stunned when a lost $50 million van Gogh Portrait of Monsieur Trabuc arrives in an ordinary UPS package delivered from Argentina. NYPD Major Case Squad Detective Clay Ryder specializes in art theft, so is assigned the investigation.
He learns that in 1944 Paris, a Jewish widow accused a German SS officer of stealing her family’s van Gogh painting. However, the officer apparently died soon after the complaint was lodged in a car accident; the painting vanished. Ryder traces the offspring of the widow, which leads to NYU Professor Rachel Meredith. The MOMA does the right thing restoring ownership to Rachel in a gala that attains international reporting. However, soon afterward someone attacks Rachel, who turns to Clay for safety even as Israeli Mossad operatives see the painting as the first step in capturing an SS officer who has been underground for decades.
This terrific thriller that is at its best during Clay’s initial investigation as readers obtain a strong police procedural and insight into Nazi art looting. The tale remains suspense filled fun as it spins into the search for the Nazi and the assaults on Rachel. However having both leaves the former a bit shortchanged and unneeded. Still THE LOST VAN GOGH is quite a find for thriller readers.