| Publisher | Macmillan |
|---|---|
| Date Published | 30 September 2022 |
| ISBN-10 | 1529004365 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1529004366 |
| Format | hardcover |
| Pages | 464 |
| Price | £ 20.00 |
Picture You Dead
by
A mysterious painting leads to Detective Superintendent Roy Grace and his team encountering art collectors, experts, forgers, fixers and goons who have a young couple and their car boot sale purchase in their sights.
Review
If you’ve ever mooched around a car boot sale hoping to find a treasure that will make you rich, then be careful what you wish for – at least, if you live in Sussex!
Harry and Freya Kipling are an ordinary young couple. He’s a builder who isn’t great with dosh, so they’ve got money worries like many others have. The painting he pays £25 for is ugly, but the frame looks good. Except, when they get it home, it appears that there’s a beautiful landscape beneath the dour portrait.
Cue a Keystone Cops caper (except a significantly nastier one) with art collectors, experts, forgers, smooth-talking fixers and goons shuttling around Sussex at speed. And trying to bring it all under control is Detective Superintendent Roy Grace and his team, who aren’t used to the art world where the serious collectors will stop at nothing to get their mitts on paintings worth an eye-watering amount.
Meanwhile, Grace and Co have their usual personal baggage to deal with. A hallmark of this series has been the way Peter James has threaded ongoing issues through the books. Once or twice this has wobbled precariously, not least with Grace’s disappearing first wife, but generally I’ve admired how James has mostly resisted the temptation to tie things up too neatly – except maybe the too convenient way he bumped off Grace’s strange son Bruno – and how he’s shown realistically the way real life presents people with peaks and troughs over months and even years.
This time out there’s a vague hint about Grace’s creepy nemesis ACC Cassian Pewe, DCI Glenn Branson is still having wobbles with his journalist fiancée and DS Norman Potting’s health issues are mentioned in passing. And there’s a bitter-sweet moment for Grace and Potting when they collect the gallantry medal awarded to Norman’s fiancée Bella, who was killed in action several books back. And allow me a shout-out for Potting, where Grace has peeled back the layers from an old-school, unPC figure of fun to show an old-school, unPC very capable cop.
James is an assiduous researcher and I did enjoy his drip-feeding of information about the art world, particularly how the forgers work. I wasn’t entirely convinced, though, that an episode of Antiques Roadshow would be screened so quickly. And I suspect the ending will be fine for some readers but have others rolling their eyes. I sighed long-sufferingly as I haven’t mastered eye-rolling …
Picture You Dead is a decent read, albeit a slow one. Usually I blitz through James’ books with smoke rising from the pages, but this time once I’d set it down I didn’t find myself picking it up so quickly. But I’m still invested in the series and James, thankfully, seems incapable of producing lame ducks. And he still has plenty of story lines bubbling away nicely.
Harry and Freya Kipling are an ordinary young couple. He’s a builder who isn’t great with dosh, so they’ve got money worries like many others have. The painting he pays £25 for is ugly, but the frame looks good. Except, when they get it home, it appears that there’s a beautiful landscape beneath the dour portrait.
Cue a Keystone Cops caper (except a significantly nastier one) with art collectors, experts, forgers, smooth-talking fixers and goons shuttling around Sussex at speed. And trying to bring it all under control is Detective Superintendent Roy Grace and his team, who aren’t used to the art world where the serious collectors will stop at nothing to get their mitts on paintings worth an eye-watering amount.
Meanwhile, Grace and Co have their usual personal baggage to deal with. A hallmark of this series has been the way Peter James has threaded ongoing issues through the books. Once or twice this has wobbled precariously, not least with Grace’s disappearing first wife, but generally I’ve admired how James has mostly resisted the temptation to tie things up too neatly – except maybe the too convenient way he bumped off Grace’s strange son Bruno – and how he’s shown realistically the way real life presents people with peaks and troughs over months and even years.
This time out there’s a vague hint about Grace’s creepy nemesis ACC Cassian Pewe, DCI Glenn Branson is still having wobbles with his journalist fiancée and DS Norman Potting’s health issues are mentioned in passing. And there’s a bitter-sweet moment for Grace and Potting when they collect the gallantry medal awarded to Norman’s fiancée Bella, who was killed in action several books back. And allow me a shout-out for Potting, where Grace has peeled back the layers from an old-school, unPC figure of fun to show an old-school, unPC very capable cop.
James is an assiduous researcher and I did enjoy his drip-feeding of information about the art world, particularly how the forgers work. I wasn’t entirely convinced, though, that an episode of Antiques Roadshow would be screened so quickly. And I suspect the ending will be fine for some readers but have others rolling their eyes. I sighed long-sufferingly as I haven’t mastered eye-rolling …
Picture You Dead is a decent read, albeit a slow one. Usually I blitz through James’ books with smoke rising from the pages, but this time once I’d set it down I didn’t find myself picking it up so quickly. But I’m still invested in the series and James, thankfully, seems incapable of producing lame ducks. And he still has plenty of story lines bubbling away nicely.
Reviewed 30 September 2022 by Sharon Wheeler
