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DEATH IS A CABARET
by Deborah Morgan
Berkley Prime Crime, November 2001
226 pages
$5.99
ISBN: 0425182029


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

I'm usually very skeptical when it comes to crime fiction involving the art and antiques trade since most authors using antique hunting as a plot device get it wrong. Deb Morgan got it right.

Jeff Talbot, former FBI agent assigned to tracking down stolen works of art, is now a "picker" for high end antiques dealers and collectors. A picker, known as a runner or knocker in England, is the person who goes to yard sales, estate sales, car boot sales, auctions, etc., in search of items that can be resold to a shopkeeper and turn a profit for both.

He drives a restored 1948 Chevrolet "woodie" station wagon and lives in his ancestral home in Seattle, furnished as it was the day in 1890 that his family moved in. His wife, Sheila, is a gourmet cook with a large trust fund.

On a trip outside Seattle, the day before a scheduled estate sale, Jeff runs into rival picker, Frank Hamilton, who is apparently threatening the elderly woman owning the estate. The woman can take care of herself and runs Hamilton off the property, but responds to Talbot;s more gentlemanly air, and sells him a few items, including a Victorian baby carriage in perfect condition, which he promptly takes to Seattle and sells to Blanche Appleby, owner of a posh antiques gallery.

Blanche has been looking for a "Cabaret set", that Napoleon had made for Josephine. Josephine had given the set to one of her ladies-in-waiting. The set had been passed down in the family, and Blanche and her mother had tea parties using the set. But then, when Blanche was 13, her mother died, and her father sold the set. Blanche has been looking for it for 57 years. The unique set is going to be sold at auction at the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island on Sunday and Jeff is determined to purchase it.

Along with some tidbits about various types of antiques, including sports memorabilia and cookie jars (an in joke) we meet lots of strange people at the Grand Hotel, and two deaths, which Jeff, using his FBI contacts, helps to solve. Although I usually don't care for elaborate descriptions of clothing worn by the protagonists, they work in this book to help define the character of the person involved. The biggest mystery to me is why I waited so long before reading DEATH IS A CABARET. I plan to read THE WEEDLESS WIDOW, second in the series, before too long.

Reviewed by Barbara Franchi, May 2003

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