Dying for Monet

Claudia Riess

reviewed by Marcia Rosen

Manhattan – An award-winning author of eight novels, Claudia Riess graduated from Vassar and resides in Manhattan. Her most recent novel is the fifth book in her art history mystery series. Dying for Monet was released June 11, 2024, by Level Best Books.

Book 5 of Riess’s art history mystery series opens on a gala evening auction at Laszlo’s, an upstart auction house in New York City. After a much sought-after Impressionist still life painting is without notice withdrawn from the auction block, its broker is found dead at the foot of an imposing statue in Laszlo’s courtyard. Amateur sleuths Erika Shawn and Harrison Wheatley are once again drawn into an investigation involving an art-related homicide, this time with one sharing an unnerving coincidence with violent crimes occurring abroad.

As Harrison searches for clues in the archives at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, Erika is on a stakeout in Brooklyn Heights gathering information on the owner of the hijacked still life. After Harrison experiences a disastrous encounter in London, he returns home, where he and Erika, along with a few of their usual cohorts, find themselves ever more deeply at odds with the movers and shakers on the dark side of fine arts commerce.

Riess has worked in the editorial departments of The New Yorker and Holt, Rinehart and Winston, and has edited several art history monographs. Stolen Light, the first book in her art history mystery series, was chosen by Vassar’s Latin American history professor for distribution to the college’s people-to-people trips to Cuba. To Kingdom Come, the fourth, will be added to the syllabus of a survey course on West and Central African Art at a prominent Midwestern university. Riess has written a number of articles for Mystery Readers Journal, Women’s National Book Association, the Sisters in Crime Bloodletter, and Mystery Scene magazine. She is available for, and has been featured on, a variety of podcasts and Zoom events. To read more about the author and her work, visit www.claudiariessbooks.com.