While skiing deep in Lake Tahoe’s backcountry, Private Eye Dan Reno finds the first naked body, buried under fresh snow. Reno’s contacted by the grieving father, who wants to know who murdered his daughter, and why? And how could the body end up in such a remote, mountainous location?
Description:Two murdered girls, and no motive…
While skiing deep in Lake Tahoe’s backcountry, Private Eye Dan Reno finds the first naked body, buried under fresh snow. Reno’s contacted by the grieving father, who wants to know who murdered his daughter, and why? And how could the body end up in such a remote, mountainous location? The questions become murkier when a second body is found. Is there a serial killer stalking promiscuous young women in South Lake Tahoe? Or are the murders linked to a different criminal agenda?
Searching for answers, Reno is accosted by a gang of racist bikers with a score to settle. He also must deal with his pal, Cody Gibbons, who the police consider a suspect. The clues lead to the owner of a strip club and a womanizing police captain, but is either the killer?
The bikers up the ante, but are unaware that Cody Gibbons has Reno’s back at any cost. Meanwhile, the police won’t tolerate Reno’s continued involvement in the case. But Reno knows he’s getting close. And the most critical clue comes from the last person he’d suspect…
EXCERPT
1
The cornice stretched three feet over the sheer face below. There was about fifteen feet of vertical drop before the snow covered slope angled out at forty-five degrees. I inched my skis farther forward, the tips hanging over the void. I was wrong—it was more like twenty feet of mandatory air. And that was the shallowest entry the ledge offered.
I blew out my breath and ignored the sickly sensation of my testicles trying to climb into my stomach. Turning back now would mean a long uphill hike, while the reward for leaping off the cornice was five hundred feet of untracked powder. A slight dip to the left marked the most forgiving launch point. I pushed myself back and sidestepped higher up the ridge. A couple deep breaths, then I released my edges and glided toward the dip.
In a second I launched over the precipice, my hands thrust forward, my knees tucked toward my chest. As I dropped, I could see the distant desert floor of Nevada fall behind the stands of pine and fir at the bottom of the bowl. I extended my legs in the instant before I touched down and absorbed the shock, blinded for a second by a blast of snow. Then I cranked my skis on edge, bounced out of the fluff, and made a second turn through the deep powder. It had snowed about a foot last night, but here the fresh coverage was at least two feet, maybe more. Bottomless under my boots.
Twenty turns to the glade below, my heart pounding, my body disappearing in blasts of powder, the white coating me from head to toe. When I reached the tree line, I skidded to a stop and caught my breath. Then I looked up and admired the S-turns I’d left on the otherwise unblemished slope. Not bad, I thought, smiling at the understatement. Most of the winter storms that blow through the Lake Tahoe region come out of the warm Pacific and dump wet, heavy snow, creating the notorious Sierra cement. But last night’s blizzard swept in from Alaska, bringing colder and lighter snow. As a result, I was in the right place at the right time.
I skated along the terminus of the bowl and turned into the trees when they became sparse enough to allow passage. This was the Nevada backcountry, unpatrolled, accessible by ducking the boundary ropes at the highest elevation of South Lake Tahoe’s ski resort, right at the California-Nevada border. Before me lay 4000 feet of descent to the high desert floor where I’d parked my truck, near Route 207 outside of Gardnerville.
It was slower going now, the terrain interrupted by tangles of deadfall and icy patches where the wind had scoured the surface. I picked my way through it, my skis alternately sinking in powder then chattering and scraping across slick bands of ice. Finally I spotted a clearing—a wide, sweeping snow bank that fell toward a collection of pines hundreds of feet below. I rode the section like a surfer on a wave, turning down off the lip then riding back up, staying high and avoiding a flat area that would likely necessitate a hike.
When I reached the trees below, I entered a broad glade, the trunks spaced at wide intervals, the snow as soft and uniform as a white pillow. The morning sun had just appeared from behind a swath of swift moving clouds, and the snow glittered with pinpricks of light. I took a long moment to take in the scenery, then I picked a line and pushed off into the mild grade. The pristine snow held no surprises, the powder light and consistent, making it easy to find a rhythm. Floating through the trees and leaving a wake of rounded tracks, I become immersed in the splendor of the moment, as if the setting had been created solely for my indulgence.
My grandiose thoughts came to a crashing halt when I came around a tree and my skis rammed into something solid beneath the snow. My binding released with a loud click, and I flew forward and face-planted in a poof of powder.
“Son of a bitch,” I said, wiping the snow from my goggles. I took a quick inventory of my body and found no injuries. Then I crawled back ten feet to where my ski lay. When I pulled it from the snow, the edge caught, probably on a hidden stump, I thought. Then the powder fell aside, and I saw a flesh-colored streak. I froze for a second, certain my eyes were playing tricks on me. Blinking, I used the ski to push away more snow.
“No way,” I whispered, my heart in my throat. A bare shoulder revealed itself, then a snarl of blond hair strung with ice. I reached down with my gloved hand and carefully pushed aside the hair. The face was half-buried, one eye visible, lashes thick with mascara, a blue iris staring blankly. Using both hands like a shovel, I pushed away the bulk of the snow covering the upper body. A sour lump formed in my gut. The body was naked, the skin that of a young woman, perhaps a teenager.
About the author:
Dave Stanton is the author of five novels in the Dan Reno private eye series. They do not have to be read chronologically to be enjoyed, but for those who want to know, the order is: Stateline, Dying for the Highlife, Speed Metal Blues, Dark Ice, & Hard Prejudice. Born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1960, Dave Stanton moved to Northern California in 1961. He received a BA in journalism from San Jose State University in 1983. Over the years, he worked as a bartender, newspaper advertising salesman, furniture mover, debt collector, and technology salesman. He has two children, Austin and Haley, and lives with his wife, Heidi, in San Jose, California. Stanton's five novels all feature private investigator Dan Reno and his ex-cop buddy, Cody Gibbons.Author's Giveaway
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Archaeologist Faye Longchamp-Mantooth has dug herself a deep hole and she can’t make her way out of it. As she struggles to recover from a shattering personal loss, she sees that everyone she loves is trying to reach out to her.
Description:Archaeologist Faye Longchamp-Mantooth has dug herself a deep hole and she can’t make her way out of it. As she struggles to recover from a shattering personal loss, she sees that everyone she loves is trying to reach out to her. If only she could reach back. Instead she’s out digging holes all over her home, the Florida island of Joyeuse.
In their old plantation home, Joe Wolf Mantooth is surrounded by family—Faye, the wife he loves; their toddler son he adores; and his father, who hasn’t gotten around to telling him how long he’s been out of prison or how he got there—yet Joe has never felt so helpless or alone.
Then a close friend at the local marina is brutally murdered, the first in a string of crimes against women that rocks Micco County. Joe, desperate to help Faye, realizes she is in danger from both her inner demons and someone who has breached the island’s isolation. Local law and environmental officials say they want to help, but to Faye and Joe they feel more like invaders. A struggling Faye reaches back over a century into her family’s history for clues. And all the while, danger snakes further into their lives, threatening the people they love, their cherished home, even the very ground—some of it poisoned—beneath their feet.
EXCERPT
Chapter One
Fish know which docks are owned by people who are generous with their table scraps. In the evenings, they gather around wooden posts that vibrate with the footsteps of a human carry- ing food. They wait, knowing that potato peels and pork chop bones will soon rain from the sky. They race to skim the surface for floating bread crumbs. They dive, nibbling at each half-eaten hot dog as it sinks. When a restaurant, even a shabby dive where hungry people clean their plates, throws its detritus off one par- ticular dock every night, fish for miles around know all about it.
On this night, the fish wait below a dock that has always offered a nightly feast. Tonight, they feel the vibrations of familiar feet. The food falls into the water, as always, and the sound of a stainless steel spoon scraping the bottom of a stainless steel pot passes from the air above to the water below. Everything is as it has been, until a sharp noise jabs into the water hard enough for the fish to hear it. The spoon falls.
The spoon is large, designed for a commercial kitchen, so it hits the water with a smack that can be heard both above and below the surface. A scream falls into the fishes’ underworld along with the spoon.
A big pot, with food scraps still clinging to its inner surface, hits the water an instant later. Only creatures with the agility of the waiting fish could scatter quickly enough to avoid being hit.
After another heartbeat, something else falls among them, something bigger and softer. Soon there are two somethings, both with arms and legs and feet and hands, one that gurgles and another that leaves when the gurgling stops.
The thing that stays behind is a human body. As it settles in the water, tiny minnows nestle in the long hair that floats around it like seaweed. Catfish explore its ten long fingers with their tentacled mouths. None of them associate its two bare feet with the sprightly vibrations that had always signaled a rain of food.
Before long, predators appear, drawn by the smell of blood.
Chapter Two
Joe Wolf Mantooth was worried about his wife.
Faye was neglecting their business. She was neglecting her health. He wanted to say she was neglecting her children, but it would kill her to think he believed such a thing, so he spent a lot of time telling that part of himself to be quiet. He also wanted to say she was neglecting him, but it would kill him to believe it, so he spent the rest of his time telling that other part of himself to be quiet. Or to shrivel up and die. Because if he ever lost Faye, that’s what Joe intended to do. Shrivel up and die.
The children seemed oblivious to the changes in their mother.
Michael, at two, saw nothing strange about her leaving the house every morning with her archaeological tools. She had always done that.
Amande was away from home, doing an immersion course in Spanish at a camp situated so high in the Appalachians that she’d asked for heavy sweaters long before Halloween. Faye had been too distracted to put them in the mail. Joe had shopped for them, boxed them up, and sent them off. Faye seemed to have forgotten that her daughter had ever said, “I’m cold.”
Amande was perceptive for seventeen. If she hadn’t noticed that Joe had been doing all the talking for the last month, she would notice soon. Lately, when faced with a call from her daughter, Faye murmured a few distracted words before pretending that Michael needed a diaper change. If Faye didn’t come up with another excuse to get off the phone, Amande might soon call 911 and ask the paramedics to go check out her brother’s chronic diarrhea.
Though Joe did speak to Amande when she called, surely she had noticed by now that he said exactly nothing. What was he going to say?
The closest thing to the truth was “Your mother’s heart fell into a deep hole when she miscarried your baby sister, and I’m starting to worry that we may never see it again,” but Joe was keeping his silence. Faye had forbidden him to tell Amande that there wasn’t going to be a baby sister.
Was this rational? Did Faye think that her daughter was never going to fly home to Florida, bubbling with excitement over her Appalachian adventure and the coming baby?
If she did, it was yet more evidence supporting Joe’s fear that Faye’s mind wasn’t right these days. Every morning brought fresh proof of that not-rightness as she walked away from him…to do what? As best he could tell, she was carefully excavating random sites all over their island. If she’d found anything worth the effort, he sure didn’t know about it.
In the meantime, Joe sat in the house, face-to-face with a serious problem. This problem was almost as tall and broad as Joe. His hair had once been as dark. His skin was the same red- brown, only deeper. This was a problem Joe had been trying to outrun since he was eighteen years old.
His father.
“Try this spot.”
****
Faye Longchamp-Mantooth believed in intuition. It had always guided her work as an archaeologist. After she’d gathered facts about a site’s history, inspected the contours of the land, and scoured old photographs, she always checked her gut response before excavating. Her gut was often right. It was only recently, however, that her gut had begun speaking out loud and in English. Lately, her gut had been urging her to skip the boring research and go straight for the digging.
“Have you ever excavated here before?” its voice asked. Faye’s answer was no.
“Then try this spot.”
Every day, Joyeuse Island sported more shallow pits that had yielded nothing. Of course, they had yielded nothing. Faye had failed to do her homework. But going to the library or sitting at her computer would require her to be still and think. Thinking was painful these days, so she skipped it.
“Okay,” she said, not pleased to see that she’d begun answering the voice out loud, “I’ll give it a shot. But I don’t think there’s anything here.”
Her hand was remarkably steady for the hand of a woman who’d been hearing voices for a month. She used it to guide her trowel, removing a thin layer of soil.
She would have known this old trowel in the dark. Her fingers had rubbed the finish off its wooden handle in a pattern that could match no hand but hers. Since God hadn’t seen fit to let her grow the pointy metal hand she needed for her work, she’d chosen this one tool to mold into a part of herself.
Faye was working in sandy soil as familiar as the trowel. It was her own. She’d been uncovering the secrets of Joyeuse Island since she was old enough to walk, and she would never come to the end of them. As she grew older, she saw the need to mete out her time wisely, but she rebelled against it. The past would keep most of its secrets, and this made her angry.Faye didn’t know where to dig, because she didn’t know what she was trying to find. It would help if the voice ever offered a less hazy rationale for ordering her out of the house. All it said was “You can find the truth. Don’t let this island keep its secrets from you.”
Her frenetic busyness was an antidote for the times the voice tiptoed into ground that shook beneath her feet. It crept into dangerous territory and then beckoned her to follow. It asked her to believe that she was to blame for the baby’s death, for the mute suffering in Joe’s eyes, for every tear Michael shed.
This was craziness. Two-year-olds cried several times a day. Men who had lost babies suffered. And there was rarely any blame to be handed out in the wake of a miscarriage, even late miscarriages that carry away a child who has been bumping around in her mother’s womb long enough for mother and daughter to get to know one another.
Still, the voice said Faye was to blame, so she believed it. And it told her that it was possible to dig up peace, so she dug.
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About the author:
Mary Anna Evans is the author of the award-winning Faye Longchamp archaeological mysteries–Artifacts, Relics, Effigies, Findings, Floodgates, Strangers, and Plunder.She has degrees in physics and chemical engineering. Her background includes stints in environmental consulting and university administration, as well as a summer spent working offshore in the oil fields.
Writing lets her spend weeks indulging her passion for history, archeology, and architecture, and months making up stories. Mary Anna is preparing to move to Oklahoma since accepting an Associate Professor position with the University of Oklahoma.
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"First off, Maynard Sims is one of my always-read authors, who never disappoints. A combo of two writing partners of long standing, Maynard Sims can write cozy while simultaneously being unafraid to stretch past paranormal borders." - Goodreads, Mallory Heart
Published: August 2015
The hunt is on!
Alice Logan has gone missing, and Harry Bailey and Department 18 have been called to help find her. The main suspect is Anton Markos, a satanic cult leader who has a predilection for young women like Alice. Members of Markos’s cult start turning up dead—shredded by what seems to be a wild animal. Is there a madman within the cult? Or is it something far more horrible?
Can Department 18 discover the impossible truth and end the spree of murder, insanity and carnage? Or will they become the prey?
"Each new novel of Maynard Sims’ Department 18 series is somehow better than the last. Mother of Demons is a fast-moving horror/thriller/mystery that captivates from the first chapter. [...] This book is a great chance to visit Department 18 with a story that is part X Files, part Sherlock Holmes, and completely enthralling." - Goodreads, Russel James
EXCERPT
Chapter One
High above street level in Clerkenwell she climbed up to the balcony’s railing and rested her naked foot on the ice cold metal. A brisk wind was coming in from the east, gusting across the balcony and raising goose bumps on the girl’s pasty white skin. From inside the penthouse the four boys watched her climb.
“Go, girl,” one of the boys – Finbar Clusky – called out. The other three laughed.
“Where’s Erik?’ another of them – Terry Butler – said. “Shouldn’t he be here? This is for his benefit, isn’t it? Hey, Alice. Don’t jump…not yet. Your main audience isn’t here yet.”
The girl glanced back into the room. “I’m not going to jump, silly. I’m going to fly. I’m going to soar, above the clouds, to the heavens. There I will take my rightful place with the other goddesses.”
“Is that what you are, Alice, a goddess?” Davy Coltrane said.
“I am Artemis; goddess of the moon, goddess of the hunt. And once I’ve taken my rightful place in the heavens, I will hunt you all down and make you kneel before me.”
“Not Artemis, my love, but Hecate, the goddess of sorcery and magic.”
All eyes turned to stare at the speaker: a man, older than all of them: handsome, with a chiseled Mediterranean face and piercing coal-black eyes. They all shrank back in their seats and cast their gaze to the floor. All except the girl who, from her perch on the balcony, looked at the man, her eyes clouded with confusion. “But, Erik, you’re here. I thought you had gone away.”
“I’m here, my love. I would never leave you.”
“Erik, I can fly. I want to show you.”
He smiled at her indulgently. “I know,” he said. “I know you can fly. You can soar, as high as a bird, more graceful than an eagle. You don’t have to prove it to me. One day we will fly together.”
She looked uncertain. “Do you promise?”
“On my life.” Erik Strasser bent low and whispered in Finbar Clusky’s ear. “How much did you give her?”
“The usual amount. Nothing excessive.”
“But now she believes she’s a bird,” Strasser said.
“No, a goddess,” Mikey Gibson said, trying to lighten an atmosphere that had suddenly turn to stone.
Strasser silenced him with a look and turned again to the girl. “Come in now, my darling. Come in and get warm. Your skin is turning blue.”
Alice looked at him questioningly for a moment, then down at her naked body. She shrugged, stepped down from the balcony, and took a step inside the penthouse. Strasser reached forward and wrapped his arms around her shivering body. Gently he led her through to the bedroom and laid her down on the bed, covering her with a quilt, waited until her shivering had stopped, and then watched a tear trickle down her cheek.
“Erik, I want to go home,” she said, in a voice so small that he had to lean forward to hear what she was saying.
“And so you will. Tomorrow you can go back and see your mother, just as we discussed.”
“Promise?”
“Of course. I give you my word.” He reached out and stroked her forehead, smoothing her long blonde hair away from her brow.
“Thank you, Erik. You’re so kind to me.”
Her eyes fluttered shut and within a moment her breathing had deepened and she was asleep.
He stared down at her, a frown creasing his forehead, and then he stepped away from the bed and went back into the lounge.
“Who was responsible for that?” he demanded, his accent thickening as his anger increased.
“Just a bit of fun,” Terry said.
“No harm in it.” That from Davy Coltrane.
“And that’s what you would have told the police once they’d scooped her body up off the pavement?”
“They didn’t mean anything by it, Erik,” Finbar said. “You’re over-reacting.”
Erik Strasser spun around to face him, his brow furrowed, his eyes blacker than ever.
Finbar grabbed his midriff and bent double as an icy hand gripped his intestines and started to twist. “Please,” he gasped. “Don’t.”
“Don’t blame Fin. It wasn’t his fault,” Davy said.
“Then whose fault was it? I left Finbar in charge”
“I was only having a laugh,” Davy continued. “I didn’t think the silly bitch would react so badly. I only gave her another shard. How was I to know she would go all goddess on us?”
Strasser turned on him. The skin of his brow had smoothed out, but the eyes burned just as deeply. “Get out,” he said in little more than a whisper. “Get out of here and don’t come back.”
The boy stood up to his full height and thrust out his chin to show he wasn’t going to be intimidated by Strasser. “Suit yourself. I’m going. This was a lousy gig anyway.” He turned to Finbar, who was slowly straightening up, the color gradually returning to his face. “I don’t go much on your choice of friends, Fin. Especially this wanker.’
Finbar gave a small, almost imperceptible shake of his head, but Davy, nostrils flaring in anger, ignored it. “I’m outa here,” he said, stalked to the door and yanked it open, slamming it shut behind him.
“Indeed you are,” Strasser said softly.
Minutes later Davy Coltrane was on the platform of Farringdon underground station, listening to the steady rumble of the approaching train.
The train’s headlamps pierced the gloom as it appeared from around a bend in the track. As the train pulled into the station Davy took a step forward…and then another.
The train hit him before he could fall from the edge of the platform. It carried his body along for a few yards until it slipped down the cold metal and disappeared under the grinding wheels.
About the authors:
Their first screenplay, Department 18, won British Horror Film festival Best New Screenplay Award 2013. They have several other screenplays in various stages of development, including funding.
All their short stories and novellas were published as a uniform eight volume collection in 2014 as The Maynard Sims Library.
They worked as editors on the nine volumes of Darkness Rising anthologies. They co-edited and published F20 with The British Fantasy Society. As editors/publishers they ran Enigmatic Press in the UK, which produced Enigmatic Tales, and its sister titles. They have written essays. They still do commissioned editing projects, most recently Dead Water, and they are working on an anthology as editors for the ITW. They also do ghost writing commissions.
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One year ago, Marta Hughes won a purse-choking sum of money at a local casino. She never returned home. Her body was discovered in a ditch twelve miles from her home; her car was back in her driveway. Linnet Isherwood cannot let her friend's unsolved murder rest. 
Published: March 20th, 2015
One year ago, Marta Hughes won a purse-choking sum of money at a local casino. She never returned home. Her body was discovered in a ditch twelve miles from her home; her car was back in her driveway.
Linnet Isherwood cannot let her friend's unsolved murder rest. She convinces ex-cop Michael McLaren to return to the work he loves. He sifts through a confusing web of lies, misconceptions and veiled motives. Are anonymous late-night phone calls, a vanished hitchhiker, and a stalker wielding empty beer bottles somehow related to the case? Or maybe the woman he broke off with is seeking revenge.
Linnet Isherwood cannot let her friend's unsolved murder rest. She convinces ex-cop Michael McLaren to return to the work he loves. He sifts through a confusing web of lies, misconceptions and veiled motives. Are anonymous late-night phone calls, a vanished hitchhiker, and a stalker wielding empty beer bottles somehow related to the case? Or maybe the woman he broke off with is seeking revenge.
EXCERPT
He brought the photo closer so he could stare at the woman. She appeared to be in her mid-forties, a brunette with hazel eyes that looked amusingly at the photographer. She came up to her husband’s chin. The husband was a graying brunet and while her son had inherited her eye color, he was blond. McLaren had no time to comment on this.
Linnet said, “The others…” She leaned forward, her left arm bent and supporting her, and tapped each photo as she mentioned their names. “The group shot is Marta, her boss, and the vet for the shelter. This…” She skipped over the others in the photograph and pointed to the woman to the extreme left. “That’s Verity Dwyer.”
“The wrongly suspected coworker.” The woman in the photo had auburn hair that shone in the sunlight; her blue eyes smiled at him. Linnet nodded. “Yes. Suspected of killing Marta, though that wasn’t proved. But she was convicted of stealing money from the shelter. She’s three months into her sentence. She was… Oh, it’s extremely involved.”
A true Anglophile, Jo Hiestand wanted to capture the traditional flavor of a detective crime novel and the intimate atmosphere of a British cozy. The result is the McLaren Case mystery series featuring ex-police detective Michael McLaren who now investigates cold cases on his own. Jo has combined her love of writing, board games and music by co-inventing P.I.R.A.T.E.S., the mystery-solving game that uses maps, graphics, song lyrics, and other clues to lead the players to the lost treasure. In 2001 she graduated from Webster University with a BA degree in English and departmental honors. Peter Lovesey, author of the Sergeant Cribb and Peter Diamond series, praises Jo’s writing: “Immaculate research, attention to detail and an elegant style are the hallmarks of Jo Hiestand’s writing. (Horns of a Dilemma is) an atmospheric novel.” Jo founded the Greater St. Louis Chapter of Sisters in Crime, serving as its first president. She is also a member of Mystery Writers of America.Author's Giveaway
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Tourists like Susan Champlain pass through the Chesapeake Bay region every year. But when Susan pays Pastor Luke Bowers a visit, he's disturbed by what she shares with him. Her husband has a short temper, she says, and recently threatened to make her "disappear" because of a photo Susan took on her phone.
Published: July 28th, 2015
James Lilliefors's unlikely detective duo, Pastor Luke Bowers and homicide investigator Amy Hunter, return in a new murder mystery set in Maryland's picturesque Tidewater County
Tourists like Susan Champlain pass through the Chesapeake Bay region every year. But when Susan pays Pastor Luke Bowers a visit, he's disturbed by what she shares with him. Her husband has a short temper, she says, and recently threatened to make her "disappear" because of a photo Susan took on her phone.
Luke is concerned enough to tip off Tidewater County's chief homicide investigator, Amy Hunter. That night, Susan's body is found at the foot of the Widow's Point bluff. Hunter soon discovers Susan left behind clues that may connect her fate to a series of killings in the Northeast, a powerful criminal enterprise, and to a missing Rembrandt masterpiece, The Storm on the Sea of Galilee.
Whoever is behind the killings has created a storm of deception and betrayal, a deliberate "tempest" designed to obscure the truth. Now Hunter and Bowers must join forces to trace the dangerous secret glimpsed in Susan's photo. But will they be the next targets on a killer's deadly agenda . . . ?
GUEST POST
Great Art, Myths and Mysteries
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| Mona Lisa |
If it hadn’t been returned two years later, would Da Vinci’s little masterpiece be the celebrated painting it is today? Probably not. The fame and mythology of Mona Lisa owe much to the publicity she garnered after disappearing. As the hunt for the painting became international news, the lady with the distinctive smile was the subject of popular songs and magazine stories, and used to sell everything from cigarettes to underwear.
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| The Concert |
The most high-profile art theft in American history occurred about 70 years after the Mona Lisa heist when thieves posing as Boston police officers talked their way into the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum after midnight, handcuffed two guards and for 81 minutes looted the galleries. The 13 works stolen included The Concert, one of only 34 paintings by Johannes Vermeer, and paintings and drawings by Rembrandt, Manet and Degas. The stolen art has been “valued” at $500 million. But, again, who would pay that?
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| Allegory of Alfonso d’Avalos |
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| The Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine |
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| The Storm on the Sea of Galilee |
The theft of priceless masterpieces is among the strangest, most mysterious of crimes. Thieves believe they are gaining something of great “value,” and they are. But the value isn’t for them. Those few high-end paintings that do sell on the black market draw far less than they’re reportedly “worth.” And most can’t be sold. The real value of works such as The Storm on the Sea of Galilee is to the public that appreciates them. The public is also the big loser when they’re taken. “Priceless” to the public, “worthless” to the thief: it’s a peculiar relationship that makes one wonder why anyone would ever want to steal a masterpiece.
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About the author:
James Lilliefors is author of the Amy Hunter/Luke Bowers mystery series (HarperCollins/Witness). The first book in the series was The Psalmist (2014). The second, The Tempest, was published in July 2015. Lilliefors has also contributed to several art books and written about art for Art and Antiques, ARTnews, The Miami Herald and other publications.
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