The Final Fabergé

September 13, 1999
On the night of his murder in 1916, Grigori Rasputin picks up a Faberg Imperial Easter egg he'd commissioned as a gift for Czarina Alexandra Feodorovna. In 1963, Vasily Karsalov loses the egg in a rigged poker game. More than 30 years later, Vasily's son Mikhail, now known as Mike Carson, has become a U.S. citizen, the owner of several car dealerships. At the opening of a new showroom, Carson is visited by Sasha Akimov, an old family friend, who tells Carson how his father was cheated out of the egg. Before revealing more, Akimov is shot. Meanwhile, in London, Det. Chief Insp. Jack Oxby takes a leave from Scotland Yard to accept a commission from the Forbes family to determine if Rasputin's Imperial egg still exists and, if so, to find it. New York City police detective Alex Tobias is investigating Akimov's murder when a meeting with Oxby provokes him to join the dangerous, cross-continental search for the precious artifact. Swan carefully intertwines the search for the murderer and the search for the egg so that the novel's numerous coincidences appear believable. And while Oxby doesn't sound the least bit English, he is charming and disarmingly intelligent. With only two other entries (The Da Vinci Deception and The C zanne Chase), Swan's series of art world mysteries has a short history, but its clever premises and excellent characters earmark it for a long future.