Portrait of a Victim Author:Emmett McDowell Jonathan Knox, thirtyish, urbane, and penny-pinching, was sole auctioneer and chief proprietor of the Green Barn, Inc., a flourishing Louisville auction house. Jonathan was a good auctioneer, too - a man who knew his business. Perhaps that was why Mr. Zazio brought the Daniel Boone diary to him for an opinion. Zazio, an avid collector of hist... more »orical autographs and rare documents - and worth between thirty and forty million dollars - was considering buying the diary from Charlie Logsdon, a brokerage agent who dealt in rare books and Americana as a sideline. The asking price was $85,000, and Zazio had put up bond for this amount before he was allowed to take the diary to Jonathan. Was the book genuine? he wanted to know - and Jonathan, without hesitation, told him that, in his opinion, the diary was a forgery.
Zazio, however, insisted that Jonathan check the diary further - and rashly, Jonathan agreed. Rashly, because the diary was stolen from Jonathan before he could even begin his investigation.
Jonathan was aroused - and when Jonathan was aroused, action was indicated. Jonathan also smelled a rat - had smelled one from the beginning. It behooved Jonathan to pay a visit to the Louisville Historical Society, where he met the beautiful and curvaceous Pamela Tuel. Pamela's hair was naturally blonde, but, in Jonathan's books, everything else about Pamela was phony, especially her story of being a member of a fine old Louisville family.
Pamela was living in town with an aunt, and when Jonathan received a call for help from Pamela in the middle of the night, he knew he couldn't ignore it. Pamela's aunt, rumor had it, was quite as beautiful and blonde as her young niece.
Jonathan had had no idea when the cherubic, rosy-cheeked Zazio left the Daniel Boone diary with him that he would become so much involved. But involved he wa, and he wa becoming more so by the minute. It wa curiosity that took him to Pamela's ancestral Kentucky "mansion," and his meeting with Agnes Tuel and her brood. But it was something stronger than curiosity that kept his nose, like a bloodhound's, to the trail - something sinister, something almost too horrible for Jonathan to contemplate.
Portrait of a Victim takes you, along with Jonathan, on a trail of counterfeiters, double dealers, and general mayhem.« less