About the book:
Artist Millie Montgomery leaves Paris and a budding romance with Rik Hansson, a Swedish art history professor. She accepts a position as the Head Curator of Brantwood Art Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico, but her career is compromised when she becomes the prime suspect in one of the largest art heists in history. Unbeknownst to Millie, Rik is an undercover agent for French Interpol and assigned to solve the heist of Picasso’s Pigeon and the Peas, valued at $28 million. Disguised as Professor Eberly Goldstein, Rik’s investigation leads him to Millie,and the Brantwood Museum believed to be a front for trafficking stolen art.Thrust into a dangerous web of international art crime, Millie discovers Rik’s deception. Betrayed, she hardens her heart against him. He fights to prove her innocence and bends her heart to forgiveness and love.
A Note from Betty:
This book is based on a true event. Five paintings were stolen from the Paris Museum of Modern Art on May 20, 2010. A Serb, the primary suspect, said, “Once inside the museum, I intended to take only one painting. But the museum’s alarm didn’t sound when the art was removed from the wall, so I wandered around the national museum for more than an hour, helping myself to four more masterpieces, before driving away in my car parked nearby.”Picasso, Braque, Modigliani, Matisse and Leger paintings, worth about $134 million, were later reported taken out of the frames, rolled in one bundle and dumped in a garbage bin on a Paris street and destroyed with the rest of that day’s trash.
About Betty:
Betty J. Slade is an author of fiction and non-fiction, anewspaper columnist, and an artist in oils and watercolors. In 2013, she published Spirit of the Red Candle, Journal of Mary Magdalene (Blanco Dove, March 2013). She painted the cover and character portraits used in this fiction book. Under Heaven’s Rage, a story of a Colorado rancher’s wife, is ready for a publisher.
She writes The Artist Lane, a weekly column for the Pagosa SUN about humorous, and some times serious, small town living, and especially about Sweet Al, in Pagosa Springs, Colorado. Living on the Front Page (Blanco Dove, January 2013) is a published collection of her selected Artist Lane articles from 2008-2012. She manages A Matter of Faith weekly column for the SUN with a team of 18 current Faith Writers.
Betty published two Bible study books. The King’s Choice, is based on the old testament book Song of Solomon (Blanco Dove, March 2013). Cameo: The Study of Ruth (Blanco Dove, second edition, March 2013) is a thumbnail sketch of the history of Israel and its redeemer. She self-published two books of poetry. She painted the book covers for her previously published books.
Her art is on display on the Princess Cruise Line, and in her Pagosa Springs’ private gallery and studio in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. She is the Vice President of the Wolf Creek Writers Network. She and Al live in Pagosa Springs, Colorado. They have four children and four grandchildren.
Love the cover of this book! The story sounds great. I want to read this one.
Betty, thanks for sharing your novel on my blog. Come back soon.