A Place of Safety: A Trish Maguire Mystery

From Booklist
London solicitor Trish Maguire has her hands full overseeing more than her share of legal cases, managing her relationship with male friend George, and dealing with the emotional demands of her young half-brother David after the murder of his mother. Then her boss commands her to do a "small favor" for Sir Henry Buxton. The favor consists of finding out how and why Toby Fullwell, curator of the respected Gregoire art collection, of which Sir Henry is a trustee, has recently sold a Pieter de Hooch painting for 5,000,000, well over its true value. Trish reluctantly agrees to take on the case, little realizing that her investigation will take her deep into a world of art forgery and blackmail, reveal a decades-old love story that is as moving as it is implausible, place her and her half-brother in danger, and topple the Gregoire collection and its curator into chaos. Cooper creates a dark and savage story with a deviously clever plot, convincing and complex characters, and a shocking climax. The best yet in a too-little-known series. Emily Melton
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Review
"Inspiringly original."--Times Literary Supplement on A Place of Safety

"A Place of Safety marks the return of British barrister Trish Maguire to the acclaimed series by Natasha Cooper, one of England's best."--The San Diego Union Tribune

"Cooper excels at depicting the effects of terror on the weak and the strong; happily, Trish is one of the latter."--Kirkus on A Place of Safety



Book Description
Barrister Trish Maguire needs all the time she can find to help her young half-brother adjust to life after the violent death of his mother. Sir Henry Buxford, an influential acquaintance, has other ideas. He asks Trish to investigate one of his private charities, a magnificent art collection built up before 1914 and lost for most of the twentieth century.

Taking a crash course in the murkier aspects of the art world, Trish is determined to unlock the secrets she is sure are hidden somewhere in the collection. Her research takes her not only into the heart of an engrossing love story, but also into the agonizing reality of the trenches of the First World War. She soon discovers a web of deceit that has spanned the decades since, catching all kinds of people in its filaments. Now, the innocent, the violent, and the victims all have to free themselves. And someone dies.

With her trademark dexterity and hard-hitting suspense, Natasha Cooper brings us the unstoppable Trish Maguire in her most challenging and enthralling case to date.



About the Author
Natasha Cooper, an ex-publisher, past Chair of the Crime Writers' Association, and lifelong Londoner, sets her novels in the city that she loves. In 2002 she was shortlisted for the Dagger in the Library, an award that goes to "the author whose work has given the most pleasure to readers." She regularly speaks at crime-writing conferences on both sides of the Atlantic.



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Three generations of old boys, their old crimes, old mothers, and absent fathers. Antony Shelley, head of chambers and master of barrister Trish Maguire's universe, asks Trish to help out his friend Henry Buxton with a spot of discreet inquiry. Wealthy, well-connected Buxton is chairman of the board of the Gregory Bequest, a small museum of paintings collected in the dark days of WWI by Jean-Pierre Gregoire, the mysterious father of another member of the old boys' network, elderly Ivan Gregory. Buxton's godson Toby Fullwell, director of the Gregory Bequest, has recently sold a Pieter de Hooch for five million pounds the museum didn't need, and without raising a fuss among the old boys, Buxton wants to know why. The Fullwell family isn't new to Trish. Their two sons attend school with her half-brother David, who's doing a school report on WWI. Fortified by research on life in the trenches that helps her understand the unfortunate history of Ivan Gregory's parents, Trish perseveres and, in spite of well-bred obstructions, finds out more of what Buxton doesn't want to know: forgeries, money laundering, and corruption. Cooper excels at depicting the effects of terror on the weak and the strong; happily, Trish (Out of the Dark, 2002) is one of the latter.


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