Walter J. (reading-is-bliss) - , reviewed on 6/9/2020 + 73 more book reviews

In his long and illustrious career, which, God willing, is hardly over, Ken Follett has written an incredible number of highly successful novels and he has long been among my favorite authors. So, I was delighted to acquire a copy of his very first debut novel originally published in Great Britain some 44 years ago under the pseudonym Zachary Stone. Unlike most of his, later far more successful works published under his own name, The Modigliani Scandal is a relatively short novel (just over 200 pages) that he himself describes (in the introduction cited below) as:
a lighthearted crime story in which an assortment of people, mostly young, get up to a variety capers, none of which turns out quite as expected.
Almost 10 years after the original publication of this book, Follett has it republished under his own name with an introduction in which the author admits that he wrote this book with some serious underlying intent which, somewhat to his chagrin at the time, seems to have been completely missed by the novel's earliest critics. With this in mind, the now more enlightened reader as he reads the story can easily spot the author's key theme that most of the people in the business of art selling and collecting could care less about the true value of artists and therefore, are quite willing to exploit them as most such dealers true interests lie only in how much money they can make from the results of the artists' hard work and rare talents.

I found this to be a rather enjoyable read though in my mind Follett may have gotten a bit too clever for his own good in the telling of the self-described "lighthearted crime story".

Back to all reviews by this member
Back to all reviews of this book
Back to Book Reviews
Back to Book Details