The Perfect Fake

Paul Garcia revels in the thuggishness of Parker's Eastern European hit man, the whininess of her Florida millionaires, and the earnest, romantic nature of her hero, Tom Fairchild, a young artist on probation. He is thrust into forging a five-hundred-year-old priceless map destroyed by the hit man and urgently needed by one of the millionaires to complete a real estate deal and save his life. Fairchild's travels from Miami to England to Italy lend further opportunities for a variety of accents, and Garcia does not disappoint. The vocal distinctions are theatrical, lending drama to a novel of international intrigue--unconnected to Parker's popular cops-and- lawyers series. D.P.D. (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine

November 20, 2006
Bestseller Parker's stand-alone thriller opens with a promising setup, but falls short of the author's best work, like Suspicion of Innocence
, which was an Edgar finalist. Talented Miami artist Tom Fairchild, an ex-con, is struggling to stay on the good side of his rigorous probation officer, while helping out at his sister's antique shop. When his impressive imitation of a 16th-century map of Florida catches the eye of Stuart Barlowe, a wealthy local power player, at a map fair, Barlowe asks Fairchild to duplicate a rare Renaissance-period map that was ruined after it got stained with the blood of its murdered owner. Despite his distrust of this offer, the cash-short Fairchild is intrigued enough by the task's difficulty to accept it. A predictable romantic subplot adds little to the narrative as Fairchild dodges an array of unsavory characters in several European countries and the body count mounts. A surprise closing twist changes nothing.