A Discerning Eye, Carol Orange

First-time novelist Carol Orange offers a take on the historic art heist at Boston’s Gardner Museum.

The robbery, committed by thieves impersonating police officers in the pre-dawn hours of March 18, 1990, resulted in the loss of thirteen objets d’art, each acquired by Museum founder Isabella Gardner. Of these, eleven were paintings of near-stratospheric value, including works by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Degas, Manet, and Flink. None have been recovered. Orange approaches this event with a Tarantino-esque willingness to put a wrench to history to achieve an alternate denouement. Boston art dealer Portia Malatesta feels a piquant tie to the stolen Vermeer (The Concert, https://tinyurl.com/yawv5yqf), through which she feels connected to her deceased brother. Frustrated by the official investigation, Malatesta applies her gallery-owner’s eye to the missing works, searching for commonalities that might provide clues to the “mastermind’s” inner world. To this end, she uses her connections with Boston’s Italian-American community to investigate possible involvement by the Boston Mob, endangering both herself and her marriage. A chance meeting (and an unexpected attraction) brings her to the attention of the FBI, who recruit her to investigate a more promising lead in Medellin, Columbia. In Medellin, she befriends Maria and Carlos Alfonso, daughter and son-in-law of the cartel kingpin. The couple, FBI sources reveal, have installed a secret gallery in their palatial home. The investigation proceeds, mildly close calls transpire, a raid is staged, but is the missing art there to be recovered?

Orange is at her best when she focusses on art, a subject she knows well. The writing in A Discerning Eye is sufficient but short of literary. Dialogue would benefit from shortening and sharpening. 1990s Medellin is a dangerous place, but amateur sleuth Malatesta seems in more danger from marital troubles and rogue attractions than from knives and bullets.