In Witham’s latest mystery in a series, private investigator Julian Peale looks into the mysterious death of a rising young artist and discovers a web of criminal conspiracy.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology student Colleen Mason is shocked when she discovers that her estranged older brother, Sam, a 28-year-old painter, had died suddenly due to an overdose,according to authorities. She’s also astonished to learn that he is widely considered to have been a creative genius, and that many art dealers are eager to locate his work, which seems to have simply vanished. Colleen refuses to believe that Sam died by accident, or by suicide; in fact, she’s sure that he was murdered, and she hires Julian, a PI with a specialty in art crimes, to dig deeper. He soon learns that Sam was promoted by Curator Services, a dubious outfit that runs “vanity operations” for artists, manufacturing public impressions that their works are in great demand—a “borderline criminal” scheme of Victor Kamin and Max Dunnaway, who have ties to Albanian organized crime. Monica Smithton, a Boston-based art dealer looking for Sam’s work, has similar ties, although she labors to keep them concealed. In this enthralling whodunit, Witham takes the reader on a gripping tour of the “shifty parts of the art world.” As Trisha Donnally, the talent scout who originally found Sam, puts it: “I guess I knew there were two sides, or many sides, to the art world, one dark and one light.” The novel adeptly creates an atmosphere of violent menace in which a young, idealist painter with openminded beliefs—Sam was fascinated by the occult and “a mysterious beyond that influences creativity”—falls prey to cynical jackals. The plot is complex but never convoluted, and for all its intelligence and nuance, it moves at an entertainingly brisk pace. Overall, it’s a delightful, thoughtful, and quietly powerful read for anyone who loves art and crime dramas.

An exceedingly intelligent private-eye tale that offers a peek into the darker corners of art-world commerce.

An art cop investigates a possible murder attempt in Witham’s crime novel, the second in a series.

Performance artist Magnifica—real name Mary Saville—has forged a reputation by parachuting into dramatic landscapes. The audience that gathers in Sedona, Arizona in June expects to see just that: the artist in her swoop parachute, landing at the base of the Devil’s Finger, one of the region’s dramatic red rock pinnacles. Instead, they witness an explosion that destroys the Devil’s Finger just before Magnifica leaps from the helicopter. Among the audience members is Julian Peale, who happens to be vacationing in Arizona with his wife, Priscilla. The former United States Navy man has made a second career as an “art cop,” employed at a tiny security firm that specializes in solving the myriad crimes of the art world. Peale’s company is hired to figure out who blew up the Finger, and why. Was it a Russian mob trying to send a message to Magnifica? Or is someone hoping to eliminate her as the heir to her mother’s significant estate? To find out, Peale will have to negotiate the hotel casinos of Las Vegas, the avant-garde art scene of Los Angeles, and the sharp-elbowed tech world of San Francisco. The trail leads to the Oracle of Fire, a Burning Man-like counterculture festival in the Nevada desert, where Magnifica plans to emerge from hiding to perform her greatest—and perhaps final—spectacle of all. Witham’s muscular prose reads like a series of raps on a locked door. Here Peale meets with the Russian art gallery owner Mikhail Federov: “Peale hoped the discussion would produce new insights about Magnifica. After all, it seemed like the Russian had been up to his ushanka, the Russian fur hat, in the world around the Saville women.” The characters are a bit too thin to sustain the webs of intrigue surrounding them, but Witham knows how to keep his story rolling through ever more arresting territory.

A gripping mystery set at the intersection of art, money, and power.

Two American agents are sent to China to investigate a major art theft in Witham’s international thriller.

When a Vermeer painting that was pilfered from the Gardner Museum in Boston 30 years ago suddenly resurfaces in China,the entire alphabet soup of American agencies takes notice. However, given the enormous stress the situation places on diplomatic detente, any attempt to recover the art must conducted with great stealth and delicacy, a complex predicament lucidly portrayed by the author in this scrupulously researched novel. The CIA sends two agents, Julian Peale and Grace Ho; the former is a military veteran who served in Afghanistan, the latter a first-generation Chinese-American (she prefers American-Chinese) who was trained by the Marines. Both have a deep knowledge of art history. Julian and Grace must manage the “interagency wrangle” they step into—the competitive jostling of various intelligence groups, American and otherwise—as well as the complexity of China’s own internecine disputes. Witham’s comprehension of Chinese culture and all of its entangled nuances is extraordinary—if nothing else, this novel is an impressive feat of scholarship. He demonstrates a similarly powerful command of art history, which is absolutely essential to the plot. The complexity of the characters is welcome—the author develops his principal players into fully realized human beings driven by multiple motivations. Art dealer Quang Daiyu, who runs the Silk Road Company, is marvelously dynamic—she is often moved by the simple pursuit of wealth, the means by which one can “buy freedom and privilege” in a China as godless as she is. However, she also sees herself as belonging to a royal line that stretches back to the days of China’s cultural dominance, a position she desperately wants to restore. This is an intellectually subtle but highly readable thriller, one that entertains without resorting to cheap formula or authorial condescension.

A political thriller as engrossing as it is thoughtful.