Goodbye Again
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- US$7.99
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- US$7.99
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A discovery in his mother's attic leads a painter into the dark world of underground art dealings
Since childhood, Ben Contini has been enchanted by nudes. The first painting ever to move him was a Modigliani, a portrait of a naked and beautiful reclining woman. Though it scandalized his mother at the time, it inspired him to become an artist; he specializes in portraits but paints nudes whenever he can. Only when his mother dies does Ben realize why Modigliani upset her so much: She had one hidden in her attic.
It is the most beautiful painting he has ever seen, but he has no idea how the widow of an Italian refugee could have come upon it. With the help of a mysterious Austrian woman who appears at his mother's funeral, Ben discovers the painting's connection to the art thieves of Nazi Germany. The beautiful nude has made a strange journey to the Contini attic, and there are men who would kill to cover her up.
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At the start of this irritatingly mopey thriller from British author Hone (The Private Sector), painter Ben Contini, whose talents have been blocked since his mistress's suicide, is stunned when Elsa Bergen, the dead woman's exact double, shows up at his mother's funeral in Dublin with hints that their fathers were clandestine associates. The discovery of a Modigliani nude concealed in his family home leads Ben to intuit decades of involvement in smuggling Nazi loot. Sure enough, neo-Nazis and art thieves chase Ben and Elsa as they amble through Europe in pursuit of the truth about the painting's history and their fathers' guilt. A study of character under pressure, this novel intermittently brings people and places to life, though mostly it moves by fits and starts through sketchy scenes and interminable chit-chat.
