Old Scores

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It is the kind of news that would normally send champagne corks flying at the Seattle Art Museum. A famous French art collector wants to give the museum an original Rembrandt! So why isn't Chris Norgren, curator of Renaissance and Baroque Art, smiling? Perhaps because the gift seems too good to be true. And there are conditions that make Chris nervous: The collector is the elderly Rene Vachey, one of the world's more controversial eccentrics. The Rembrandt has come out of nowhere - in fact, from a Paris junk shop - with no known history of ownership. Vachey will let Chris examine the painting, but he's not allowed to make scientific tests before he officially accepts the painting for the museum. Could the whole episode be a cruel hoax? Chris knows that if he authenticates the painting and it's a fake, he'll have embarrassed both himself and his museum. But if he rejects Vachey's gift, and the Rembrandt turns out to be real, he'll also look like a fool and Seattle will have lost a magnificent art treasure. Chris flies to France to leave a look for himself. The trip, which comes at an inconvenient time in Chris's shaky love life, soon takes a sinister and deadly turn. Chris must use all his wits and expertise in a perplexing quest for a killer, the evaluation of a painting that might or might not be a Rembrandt, and the untangling of a complex man's many-layered past. Old Scores is rich with European ambiance, fascinating art lore, and a compelling, insider's view of a rarefied world that few of us ever see. It is the work of a master.