The Piltdown Picasso

Book excerpt: The Piltdown Picasso is a fast-moving, well-plotted thriller, peopled by compelling characters shot through with a strong thread of humour. Matthew (Fax) Fairfax, a man with a past, arrives back in London after spending some years travelling and is quickly drawn into the capital’s fine art community. After helping a friend out with a favour he finds himself framed as the prime suspect when celebrity Mika Slade, who has recently purchased a dubious Picasso, is gunned down. Fairfax is released from police custody due to lack of evidence and joins forces with Gabi, Slade’s zany PA, in an attempt to identify the murderer. They discover that beneath the gloss and polish of London’s art world lurks a sleazy underbelly of drugs, insurance scams and art fraud. An industry where crooked dealers threaten, maim, kidnap and murder to ensure their lucrative trade continues in a rigged marketplace where no work of art is quite what it seems. When Gabi is taken hostage, and possibly poisoned by the fumes from the art forger’s lethal liquid Bakelite, Fairfax confronts the scam’s mastermind in a dramatic and fatal climax high above the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern. A rip roaring tale of art and crime, this is the perfect book for all crime fiction fans.