Dark, elegant, and emotionally exacting…
Sharpe dives headlong into the murky waters of identity, obsession, and deception in her smart, psychologically charged thriller. Nick McCoy is trying to walk away from a long career in art forgery, but not before pulling off one final, calculated act of revenge against Dixon Steele, a man with a violent past and far too much power. Meanwhile, his former therapist, Kate O’Dade, still reeling from the loss of her husband, gets pulled back into McCoy’s world when a Matisse painting shows up unannounced on her doorstep. The painting, and her decision to ask Nick for help, set off a chain of events involving stolen art, past crimes, concealed identities, and more than one murder.
The novel flashes between perspectives: Nick’s hard-boiled, sardonic voice and Kate’s more introspective, cautious tone. This structure gives readers an intimate look into the lives of two people forever marked by what they’ve lost and what they still want. Sharpe, a psychologist by training, is most comfortable when her characters are emotionally raw. Nick is a tangle of charm, calculation, and inner ruin. Kate is steadier but just as complex. The prose is polished, often lyrical, with a painterly attention to detail. The art world is described with both reverence and razor-sharp critique. Scenes in which Nick evaluates forged Monets, or navigates the underworld of high-end restoration are some of the book’s most fascinating. But what keeps the novel ticking is its thematic depth. This is a book about what it means to be seen, to be misread, to be copied. It explores the blurry line between art and artifice, healing and manipulation, love and control.
A meditation on truth in all its forms—painted, spoken, and withheld—this is a genre-bending literary thriller that lingers long after the final page.
Redwood Publishing, LLC
Pub date March 26, 2025
ISBN 978-1966333951
Price $22.99 (USD) Hardcover, $14.99 Paperback, $6.99 Kindle edition
