“I love riddles and mysteries”, writes the heroine of this intriguing real-life detective story, and the one she sets out to solve leads her deep into a tangle of European and family histories. The art collection of the title belonged to her great-grandfather, the illustrious Jewish connoisseur and benefactor Jules Strauss, and after a casual remark by her cousin from Sotheby’s, she’s off on the trail of several Monets, Renoirs and Sisleys believed looted by the Nazis. It’s slow to get going, but grips ever tighter as the investigation proceeds. The translation is by Natasha Lehrer.
The Vanished Collection (Pauline Baer de Perignon, Head of Zeus, 2022, ISBN 9781803280905, 256pp, £20)
NOTES
This book review was published in the April 2022 issue of France magazine.
For more information about Paris, click here; for more about this and other titles from Head of Zeus, click here. To read more of my book reviews and other published work, click here.