REVIEW: Framed by John M. Green

Art conservator JJ Jego is happily house-sitting in her boss’s swanky luxury apartment on Sydney’s foreshores when she glimpses a few paintings through a neighbour’s parted curtains.

Given her expertise, she recognises the image of Van Gogh’s masterpiece, Six Sunflowers, known to have been destroyed during World War II. Then she spies what looks like a Rembrandt, infamously stolen from a Boston gallery in 1990. Surely they must be fakes?….but what if they’re not? Can she somehow finagle meeting the neighbour to get a closer look?

So begins one of this season’s best crime thrillers – an art heist mystery that will simultaneously grip readers while it entertains and educates, its action moving from Sydney to Belfast, Paris and Monte Carlo.

JJ reluctantly finds herself in the firing line of a ruthless global organised crime empire as she doggedly pursues the answers to some of art history’s biggest mysteries.

Bestselling thriller writer John Green, with this, his sixth novel, clearly has put in the research hard yards.  The latest techniques and equipment used in art detection are meticulously explained along with the real-life history of the multiple masterpieces that feature in the story.

Beneath the surface of Framed, however, is a lot more than paint pigments and canvas wefts and warps. Without labouring extraneously or detracting from the action-filled narrative, Green also sheds light on issues beyond the world of art. Social anxiety, divorce, bipolar disorder, coercive control and dyslexia all make their way into the story, ensuring a novel which offers far more sophistication and cerebral food for reflection than your average thriller.

This book will, no doubt, have readers rushing to the Art Gallery of NSW and other galleries around the world to appreciate priceless art treasures through new eyes. At its very end, happily, Framed leaves the door well and truly open for a sequel – one which readers will eagerly anticipate.

—Framed by John M. Green (Pantera Press) is out now.

Framed

by John M. Green

When art conservator JJ Jego spots a long-lost masterpiece through the window of a luxury apartment, she’s drawn into a dark web of intrigue, deception and murder.

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Scott Whitmont