Search - The Bernini Bust (Jonathan Argyll, Bk 3)

In The Bernini Bust, a privately owned Los Angeles museum has just made two unusual purchases – a painting that doesn’t really fit into the museum’s collection, from lovable but rather bumbling dealer Jonathan Argyll, and an assortment of half-rate (and possibly fake) classical sculpture from a known-to-be-crooked dealer. However, it soon turns out that the latter dealer was tricked into smuggling a valuble marble bust by the famous Bernini out of Italy (which of course means that Flavia, from the Art Crimes squad in Italy gets called in) – a bust that possibly he had some connection to in the past. However, the museum’s owner-patron soon turns up murdered right before making a big announcement, and the shady dealer goes missing… the conclusions seem obvious.. but, of course, they’re not. This installment does suffer for being set in L.A. rather that the more colorful settings of Europe that Pears prefers, and I felt that Jonathan seemed a little too bumbling in this one.