The Van Gogh Deception

Starred review from June 15, 2017
Two kids race around a city on a wintry night, tangling with elite operatives and foiling a crime they don't understand. In contemporary Washington, D.C., an unidentified man tries to evade goons in a parking garage. A roughly-12-year-old boy sits on a bench in the National Gallery of Art, alone, struck with amnesia. (This amnesia's a plot device, not psychological realism.) Art--his name?--knows nothing about himself but everything about art history. Criminal mastermind Dorchek Palmer and his highly skilled covert criminal operatives will do anything to protect their sale of a forged van Gogh, including hacking and erasing security footage across the city--and kidnapping Art and 10-year-old Camille, Art's friend from emergency-placement foster care. Narrative perspective bounces among the kids, Dorchek, and Dorchek's team. The kids display plenty of ingenuity (spray your kidnapper's stun gun with a shaken can of Coke!), but they don't know Art's identity or what's going on. Readers, tantalizingly, know some things but not others: what's the spider that Dorchek seeks to destroy? Who is Art? Integrated QR codes allow readers with access to a device/smartphone to view artwork by van Gogh, Degas, and other artists at relevant moments. Art and Camille are white, as are most other characters. A suspenseful mystery romp with art appreciation and heartening trust in readers' intelligence. (map, author's note) (Mystery. 10-14)

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March 1, 2017

Gr 4-6-A nameless 12-year-old boy is found loitering in Washington's National Gallery of Art, with dissociative amnesia, the result of a trauma he can't recall. It also seems that he is on the run from a gang of covert criminal operatives led by a millionaire tech developer. Once he teams up with spunky redhead Camille, the daughter of his temporary guardian, the pieces start to fall into place. It turns out that the boy is the one person who can upend a scheme to sell a faked missing van Gogh painting to the gallery for $183 million. While trying to stay one step ahead of his pursuers, Art (the name is written in his jacket) and Camille also race to find the protagonist's art historian father, who has been feared murdered. Much of the narrative hinges on art history and forgery, as well as the seizure of European masterworks by the Nazis. Hicks integrates necessary details into the contemporary narrative. The book occasionally bogs down in meticulous descriptions of downtown DC geography, the history of the National Gallery, and seemingly endless chase scenes. While the art theft plot and historical context are sound, the idea that a group of successful international criminals could repeatedly be flummoxed by two plucky tweens reaches into absurdity. QR codes link to further information about paintings mentioned in the text. VERDICT A workmanlike chase plot spiced up with some art history, this is an additional purchase for middle grade collections.-Bob Hassett, Luther Jackson Middle School, Falls Church, VA

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