When Norman de Ratour discovers the body of Heinrich von Grumh in a car outside his beloved Museum of Man, he knows he faces a sticky public relations mess. What he doesn't know is that the gun used to kill the honorary curator is his own Smith & Wesson revolver. Implicated, publicly embarrassed, his life's work in danger, Norman becomes the prime per- son on a list of unusual suspects. Along the way, he both lives with and is aided by Alphus, former denizen of the Primate Pavilion and a creature who has an intellect to be reckoned with as well as a low, finely ar- ticulated opinion of the human species. As Norman endeavors to find the villain and clear his name, he learns that more than coins gets counterfeited -- that people, from the ravishing merry widow Merissa Bonne to the dour Feidhlimidh de Buitlier, are not always what they purport to be. Replete with institutional spoofery, a plot hedged like a garden maze, and a literate style that treats the English language like the verbal funhouse it is, this third in the Norman de Ratour murder mysteries series sustains the genre invented by Poe while twisting and bending it into new forms.

The dean of a museum in England has been murdered and his body served as a series of dishes, ranging from roast dean to fried dean. Suspicion falls on the ethnology department whose members are rumored to have been dabbling in cannibalism. Norman de Ratour of the registrar's office investigates.

The second installment in a hilarious, suspenseful series takes black comedy to philosophical heights, exploring the human--and inhuman--condition and seeking to redeem it through what might best be described as the humor of despair.

Duddington Pell Chalmers is a young man of taste, class, and girth. As trustee for a local art museum, he is called in by police when the troublesome curator is murdered and soon finds himself at odds with the official enquiry. There is no shortage of suspects among local artists, art dealers, and collectors, while motives become muddled when it is discovered that murder was not the only crime. Chalmers knows that time is of the essence, or the police will arrest his artist friend, bringing ruin to a bright career, but can he follow the clues to unmask the murderer?

From the files of Scotland Yard's "Black Museum" (open only to police officers) come true crime stories of some of the most infamous murder cases of the 19th and 20th centuries--the Lambeth Poisoner, "baby farmer" Amelia Elizabeth Dyer, the Gentleman Vampire of Bournemouth, the Brides in the Bath Murders, the Rillington Place murders and many others. Along the way, investigators pass a number of crime-solving milestones, included the first use of fingerprint technology, the early use of photography and the first time "The Yard" enlisted the press to help hunt down a killer.

'A thoroughly researched, objective work, full of fascinating historical detail. It is especially valuable for the insight it provides into the way ordinary Americans of the 19th century experienced and confronted the issues and concerns of their time.' ---Library Journal

A tautly paced investigation of one the 20th century's most audacious art frauds, which generated hundreds of forgeries-many of them still hanging in prominent museums and private collections today Provenance is the extraordinary narrative of one of the most far-reaching and elaborate deceptions in art history. Investigative reporters Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo brilliantly recount the tale of a great con man and unforgettable villain, John Drewe, and his sometimes unwitting accomplices. Chief among those was the struggling artist John Myatt, a vulnerable single father who was manipulated by Drewe into becoming a prolific art forger. Once Myatt had painted the pieces, the real fraud began. Drewe managed to infiltrate the archives of the upper echelons of the British art world in order to fake the provenance of Myatt's forged pieces, hoping to irrevocably legitimize the fakes while effectively rewriting art history. The story stretches from London to Paris to New York, from tony Manhattan art galleries to the esteemed Giacometti and Dubuffet associations, to the archives at the Tate Gallery. This enormous swindle resulted in the introduction of at least two hundred forged paintings, some of them breathtakingly good and most of them selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Many of these fakes are still out in the world, considered genuine and hung prominently in private houses, large galleries, and prestigious museums. And the sacred archives, undermined by John Drewe, remain tainted to this day. Provenance reads like a well-plotted thriller, filled with unforgettable characters and told at a breakneck pace. But this is most certainly not fiction; Provenance is the meticulously researched and captivating account of one of the greatest cons in the history of art forgery.