The Con: A Gil Yates Private Investigator Novel - Hardcover

Boyle, Alistair

3.67

6 ratings by Goodreads

9780962729799: The Con: A Gil Yates Private Investigator Novel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0962729795 ISBN 13: 9780962729799

Publisher: Allen a Knoll Pubs, 1996

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(Description: Gil Yates (AKA Malvin Stark) manages to escape the clutches of his wife and employer/father-in-law, and humdrum life to investigate the whereabouts of a missing Monet. While in London, he meets Sarah, and art gallery assistant and solicits her help)

Sarah opened the door to my knock, and knocked the wind out of me. She wore a filmy multicolored skirt, rather long, that looked like it might have been painted by Gauguin. A yellow gauzy top complemented it.

"Can you come in a minute?" she asked. "I have something I'd like to show you."

Inside her modest flat, the walls were hung with Impressionist reproductions - mostly photographic, but a few lithographs, including Renoir's black study of Richard Wagner, and a Redon head of Christ with a crown of thorns - also black on white paper.

"Cheaper than color," she explained, when I noted she seemed to favor black-and-white original prints.

But the miracle of the place was the floor. It was covered with books.

"I didn't know you lived in a library," I said.

Sarah smiled. "I was quite an academic in a former mutation," she said. "I've been racking my brain over your pictures of the alleged Monet. After I left you I almost went nuts, and I didn't know why. Now I do. Here." She picked two books off the floor and the larger fell down again.

"Those books are too big to hold," I said. "I'll come to the books." I dropped to the floor and she came down with a liquid motion, as though she were creame frache.

"Look at this," she said, pointing to the two-page spread of a Monet painting called Rue Montorgueil, painted in 1878. It had lots of colored flags, all red, white and blue (for France), on multistory buildings. The Monet in question was similar, but while this scene seemed to be in spring or summer, our painting was a winter scene.

"Now look at this," Sarah said, showing me a picture of View of London at Night. The book said it was painted by Monet after 1900. He was teetering toward the abstract, Sarah said. "Look at the spots of bright color on the dreary background of dark buildings and dark sky."

"Yes," I said. I saw what she was talking about, but I didn't know what she was getting at.

"Now look at this," she said, pulling another book center stage. It was opened to a picture of a painting called Afternoon on the Avenue, 1917, also known as Flags, Afternoon on the Avenue.

Then it hit me. My Monet picture was a clever conglomeration of all three.

From Publishers Weekly:

Too many puns and too few cons make a groaner out of the second Gil Yates caper (after The Missing Link). Most of the time, Yates is Malvin Stark, underachiever and dweeb. By day, he works for his blustery father-in-law; by night, he fantasizes about braining Dorcas (aka Tyranny Rex), his battle-ax of a wife. But here, in his other life as Yates, a discreet PI who only works on a contingency basis, he receives a call from Franklin d'Lacy, the flamboyant managing director of the Los Angeles Metropolitan Museum of Art, who asks him to recover a stolen Monet. With the promise of a cool million upon delivery of the painting to d'Lacy, Yates jets off to London and then Zurich, following the trail of a gallery owner and a notorious forger until it leads to his nemesis (and first client), arms dealer Michael Hadaad. Who's getting conned? That's the question. But the plot is really secondary to the Walter Mittyness of it all, as the narrating Yates relates every henpecked husband's fantasy of derring-do. His mangling of cliches ("fit as a cello"; "the vegetables of my labor") are charming for about 10 pages. After that, it's a matter of a reader's willingness to endure a tale that's about as credible as Snoopy's exploits in his Sopwith Camel.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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