A Discerning Eye

When the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston is robbed of several of its treasures including a Vermeer and a Rembrandt, young, beautiful art gallery owner Portia Malatesta, a long-time docent there, is devastated. The stolen Vermeer, The Concert, has sentimental meaning and she especially wants it returned to its cherished spot above the bench where she and her late brother used to meet and talk. Although she is well acquainted with the stolen pieces, she finds herself studying photographs of them and conjecturing about why the thief chose those works when more valuable pieces would have been just as easy to take and transport. Her husband begins to worry that she has developed an obsession. She concludes that the thief is a man who has no intention of selling the masterpieces but wants them for his own pleasure. As she prepares for an opening at her gallery for an artist she is promoting, she writes analyses of the stolen pieces and, from them, builds a written psychological profile of the thief. Through a friend and some serendipity, this profile will be seen by a top agent in the FBI’s stolen art department. She is invited to his office in Washington, DC, where he recruits her to his cause. The game is afoot.Ms. Orange has written a thoughtful, serious, charming, and satisfying caper that takes us and our heroine from Boston to Miami to Buenos Aires to Medellin where she uses contacts from a previous job, fluency in Spanish, considerable charm and wits to save a life, dodge a bullet, and gather critical information. Along the way, we meet some well-drawn characters, enjoy a lesson in art and art history, and learn some things about drug cartels. I enthusiastically recommend this smart, well-written novel. Its release coincides with the four-part series Netflix about this still unsolved robbery at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. The reward for the return of these treasures is now at $10M and, after reading A Discerning Eye, we will recognize them.

This author's debut novel caught my interest from the first page. The heroine, a strong woman is surprised by her brothers suicide. She then goes on in her attempts to solve a mystery about a famous heist in what was "their place" - the Gardiner museum in Boston. It's her love of art mingled with his and her outrage at the desecration of their shared memories that carries meaning. This sets the stage for the mystery that follows as the heroine meets and tangles with characters that would seem out of odds with her as she is both put in and seeks out numerous dangerous situations in her quest. As the characters become more alive, I really began to connect with them and especially with her. The mafia connection and the dentist are one interesting pairing but there's many more. I’m not an aficionado of art but I found myself engaged because the authors love and knowledge of the subject comes across so clearly. I think however you don’t have to love art to be taken with the book because it's just a really good story, told really well. There are numerous twists and turns. Bravo on this very engaging book. I'm looking forward to more from this author.

If you’ve ever been mildly interested in art and the art world, you know about the heist of great works of art from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, The heist rocked the art world and has never been solved to the chagrin of all federal and local law enforcement. Well Carol Orange has solved it in a fast paced, exciting romp that along the way teaches you how to look at and appreciate great works. Her book is A Discerning Eye and it is engaging, imaginative, informative and fun. I recommend it.

If you love a really absorbing mystery based on a real event then this book is for you! It revolves around the largest art heist in history when 13 pieces are stolen from the Gardner Museum in Boston. The elements of a transfixing whodunnit are all there: great characters, psychological profiling, engaging and very descriptive prose, deep knowledge of art history and best of all a wonderful female character who is determined to find out who carried out this crime as well as recover the paintings. This takes her into dangerous territory and involves a lot of seedy characters in a Colombian underworld at great risk to find the link between the stolen paintings and the thief and therefore retrieve the art. Ms Orange is also excellent as she resonates personally with the problem of family and job passion and dealing with loss. I loved going on this adventure with a smart, sexy, strong female as she navigated dangerous situations and had to reconcile her mission with her family responsibilities to achieve her goal. It is a page turner for sure, and I highly recommend it to everyone, and add a star if you love art. I absolutely loved this book and hope we get to follow the complex and adventurous Portia Malatesta on further exciting and enthralling romps!

Love a good mystery with a strong female sleuth? This book's for you. Author Carol Orange plunges us into the high-stakes world of art theft, as she explores who might have been behind the world's biggest museum heist. Although the (real!) Gardner robbery remains unsolved to this day, this lively novel is a clever take on what might have happened, as the heroine divines clues to the thief's profile in the artworks themselves. Recommended!