New

I rather expected more from this having read [b:An Instance of the Fingerpost|15888|An Instance of the Fingerpost|Iain Pears|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166695893s/15888.jpg|950198], [b:The Dream of Scipio|16442|The Dream of Scipio|Iain Pears|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1309203515s/16442.jpg|2548352], and [b:The Raphael Affair|875109|The Raphael Affair|Iain Pears|http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51DZ27CKSKL._SL75_.jpg|1045254]. Put bluntly I found this pedestrian for the most part. I did enjoy some of the more lively interchanges between the character but the mystery itself as well as the interplay amongst the crew in Italy left much to be desired in my opinion. However it is a nice fluffy read for summer and I suspect many will find this just to their tastes. ( )

General Bottando, head of the Art Theft Squad in Rome, is being challenged by an incoming bureaucrat, someone who uses the squad’s spotty conviction rate to suggest the General is old and out of touch and needs to be replaced - by him, of course. He is using information found in old files that suggest that General Bottando believes in a Master Thief who has stolen many important paintings over the years without leaving any trace of his or her identity; the General, of course, enjoys playing with that idea but doesn’t actually *believe* it. However, when an old woman comes forward declaring that an art dealer 30 years earlier had defrauded her, General Bottando sends Flavia di Stefano to check it out. In the meantime, the English sometime art dealer Jonathan Argyll has a quest of his own, to rural Norfolk, where he immediately stumbles upon a body - that of Flavia’s quarry, in fact. Can they, together, work out what is really going on before the General is forced out of his job?.... I am enjoying re-reading this series set in the 1990s, as it is whimsical, funny at times and gently satirizes the elevated realms of high art and its acquisition, despite the fact that there are also evil and gruesome things going on as well. This is the fifth in the series, which should be read in sequence, but I expect new readers will enjoy meeting Jonathan, Flavia and General Bottando as much as I have; recommended! ( )

Has an English master-thief been picking off unrecognised paintings by great artists for the last thirty years? Nobody really thinks so, and yet, and yet ....

By far the funniest in this series, with a solution that took me by surprise at least. ( )

This is #5 (of 7) in Iain Pears' Art History Mystery series, but it's the last I read! I saved it a while, knowing that after this one, there aren't any more! Objectively, this probably isn't the best of the series,but it's a solid entry. Bottando, the director of the Art Theft Squad, has an upstart after his job, and out to discredit him and his methods. He grabs onto a dead-case file of old thefts, which Bottando had a theory about - that they might all have been the work of one mastermind, nicknamed 'Giotto' - in order to prove his point. But, coincidentally, at this point Flavia and her boyfriend Jonathan come across evidence regarding one of these thefts which seems to indicate that Bottando's wild theory might have had something to it after all. But can they turn up enough evidence in time to vindicate Bottando?"
( )