Quick & Dirty

August 7, 2017
The theft of a small, unknown Van Gogh painting from a Park Avenue penthouse propels bestseller Woods’s suspenseful 43rd novel featuring wealthy, well-connected New York attorney Stone Barrington (after Indecent Exposure). During the robbery, the painting’s owner, Mark Tillman, took a fatal plunge off the penthouse terrace. Was he pushed, or was it an accident? And might Tillman’s attractive widow, Morgan, somehow be involved? Since Stone and Morgan become lovers soon after they meet, Stone is inclined to believe her innocent of any wrongdoing. That a couple living in the Hamptons, both artists, visited Tillman at his Manhattan residence the afternoon of his death complicates the case. Arthur Masi, the expert who heads the NYPD art squad, assists Stone in his quest to recover the stolen Van Gogh in time to spare the painting’s insurer from making a huge payout. The excitement builds as the deadline approaches, though the surprise twist ending raises more questions than it answers. Agent: Anne Sibbald, Janklow & Nesbit.

September 15, 2017
Somebody must have changed Stone Barrington's meds. The studly New York attorney's latest adventure finds him investigating an actual crime, looking for clues, making inferences, and notching only a single new amorous conquest.A trio of no-goodniks armed with sledgehammers attack Stone's Bentley as he and his driver, ex-Royal Marines commando Fred Flicker, wait at a red light. The dunderheads barely damage the armored vehicle, but it turns out that they've targeted many other luxury cars, one of them driven by widow Morgan Tillman, whose husband left her a wealthy woman when he fell off their penthouse terrace during a theft by the world's most enterprising cat burglar. Approached by Morgan, who vents about the attack on her car, Stone takes her to dinner with his old NYPD partner, Police Commissioner Dino Bacchetti; she vents in turn to him; and the car attackers, having ushered Stone and Morgan to the same bed, disappear as completely as the Ford Edsel to make room for Arthur Steele, who tells Stone about Vincent Van Gogh's very last painting (no, not the one with the crows over the cornfield), which was apparently stolen from the Tillman penthouse at the same time Mark Tillman was killed. Steele's firm is about to pay Morgan the $60 million for which the painting was insured, but he suspects that it's actually a consummate forgery by Tillman neighbor Angelo Farina, whose son, Pio, along with his girlfriend, sculptor Ann Kusch, inflame Dino's suspicions by lying about where they were during the break-in. Steele offers Stone $8 million to recover the painting within the week--an offer Stone, realizing that the payment may have to see him through two or three more heavy-spending installments (Indecent Exposure, 2017, etc.), ups to $12 million before he begins searching for the painting, which passes improbably from one crook to another, each with a more inflated assessment of its true value.The closest the hero is ever likely to come to old-fashioned detection, though his creator's heart is clearly more in the chase than the solution.

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September 1, 2017
Woods sets aside his D.C. localewhere Stone Barrington's longtime lover, Secretary of State Holly Barker, is being touted as a presidential candidateto focus on art theft in New York City. A painting of a field filled with flowers, widely authenticated as a van Gogh but with a murky provenance, was stolen from Mark Tillman's Park Avenue penthouse on the day he died in a fall from his terrace. Barrington, who is soon bedding widow Morgan Tillman, is offered a 20 percent fee to find the painting by the company that insured it for $60 million and contracts to work independently with Arthur Masi, head of the NYPD art squad. And Barrington's old pal Police Commissioner Dino Bacchetti is at hand, too. Barrington isn't convinced of the van Gogh's authenticity, knowing that the work of master copyist Angelo Farina has fooled experts before. Seven- and eight-figure sums motivate the players, unsavory and otherwise, and a few are killed in the search, but this chase is more convoluted than violent as it twists to the conclusion. Quick and easy reading in the expected Woods style.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

May 15, 2017

As with Grisham, no word on plot when it comes to Woods's next Stone Barrington novel. It is, however, his fourth Barrington novel in 2017, so your head is probably spinning.

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