Murder at the National Gallery - Hardcover

What happens when a world-class art expert wants not only to exhibit a long-lost painting by Caravaggio but to own it himself?
Margaret Truman takes us into a heady, exciting world of genius with this story of a senior curator at the nation's famed National Gallery of Art who plans a brilliant exhibition around the masterpiece. He also begins to make another, more personal, daring plan. His masterly scheme promises prestige, fame, a small fortune, plus a number of artful deceptions - and a disappearing act that will rival the story of the painting itself.
But things intervene in the form of a demanding son, a more demanding and ambitious mistress, an unscrupulous collector, persons suddenly dead, and the fact the Annabel Reed-Smith is asked by her ex-college roommate, now the vice president's wife, to keep an eye on things at the Gallery and the coming exhibition.
Murder at the National Gallery is a look inside one of the nation's premier art institutions. It also shows us what goes into the mounting of a major exhibition, involving international trade (legal and otherwise), Customs and customs, government, and art authorities. It provides an up-close portrait of art theft, smuggling, and forgery in several places, including Italy, where they are among the nation's major industries.