The Lover’s Portrait
Author: Jennifer S. Alderson
Series: #1 in the Zelda Richardson Mystery series
Rating: ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
Description:
When a Dutch art dealer hides the stock from his gallery – rather than turn it over to his Nazi blackmailer – he pays with his life, leaving a treasure trove of modern masterpieces buried somewhere in Amsterdam, presumably lost forever. That is, until American art history student Zelda Richardson sticks her nose in.
After studying for a year in the Netherlands, Zelda scores an internship at the prestigious Amsterdam Historical Museum, where she works on an exhibition of paintings and sculptures once stolen by the Nazis, lying unclaimed in Dutch museum depots almost seventy years later.
When two women claim the same painting, the portrait of a young girl entitled Irises, Zelda is tasked with investigating the painting’s history and soon finds evidence that one of the two women must be lying about her past. Before she can figure out which one it is and why, Zelda learns about the Dutch art dealer’s concealed collection. And that Irises is the key to finding it.
Her discoveries make her a target of someone willing to steal – and even kill – to find the missing paintings. As the list of suspects grows, Zelda realizes she has to track down the lost collection and unmask a killer if she wants to survive.
Review:
Sometimes when you pick up a random book for a reading challenge (in this instance, I needed a book that was set primarily in Netherlands), you discover a gem. The Lover’s Portrait is one of those gem’s – i’d honestly never even heard of the author and I came by it searching fiction and Netherlands on Amazon (and then narrowing down to kindle unlimited books). I’ve studied the holocaust on and off over the years and know about the looting and stealing of artwork that occurred in many of the Nazi occupied countries – so a mystery about discovering what happened to a collection of paintings was something that caught my eye and i borrowed it. And then it sat on my kindle – i think for maybe close to a month before I actually picked up my kindle and read it.
I was pretty much sucked into Zelda’s story right away – she kind of reminded me of myself at times (not that i have any experience with museum’s – but rather the bull in a china shop get right to the problem and sometimes going a bit too far). I thought the author did a good job of writing a character who was kind of out of place in society as she isn’t native dutch but also trying to figure out what she wanted to do with her lift (and waiting to find out if she was accepted in a master’s program in museum studies). The mystery in and of itself was solid – i had kind of an inkling about 1/2 way through of who the bad guy(s) were but at times, the author left me questioning whether I was right or not (which to me is the sign of a good mystery). I liked how she alternated between WW2 Amsterdam and present day Amsterdam.
I’ll admit that i’ve already borrowed the second book in the series and can’t wait to see where Zelda’s adventures take her next!
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