Murder at the National Gallery - Tapa dura

What happens when a world-class art expert wants not only to exhibit a long-lost painting by Caravaggio but to own it himself?
Margaret Truman takes us into a heady, exciting world of genius with this story of a senior curator at the nation's famed National Gallery of Art who plans a brilliant exhibition around the masterpiece. He also begins to make another, more personal, daring plan. His masterly scheme promises prestige, fame, a small fortune, plus a number of artful deceptions - and a disappearing act that will rival the story of the painting itself.
But things intervene in the form of a demanding son, a more demanding and ambitious mistress, an unscrupulous collector, persons suddenly dead, and the fact the Annabel Reed-Smith is asked by her ex-college roommate, now the vice president's wife, to keep an eye on things at the Gallery and the coming exhibition.
Murder at the National Gallery is a look inside one of the nation's premier art institutions. It also shows us what goes into the mounting of a major exhibition, involving international trade (legal and otherwise), Customs and customs, government, and art authorities. It provides an up-close portrait of art theft, smuggling, and forgery in several places, including Italy, where they are among the nation's major industries.

er success in Capital Crimes, the bestselling author of First Ladies takes readers behind the exhibits at one of D.C.'s most popular attractions. When a senior curator at the National Gallery discovers a lost Caravaggio, he concocts a masterly scheme to exhibit and exploit the masterpiece, which escalates into murder as an art form.