Jan Rehner, a lecturer at York University in Toronto, won the 2004 Arthur Ellis Award  for Best First Crime Novel for her book Just Murder. Crime plays a major role in her third novel, which hinges on a Matisse sketch with a problematic provenance.

The main character is Chloe Lea, a 28-year-old Toronto artist who grew up believing the sketch belonged to her mother, and that the woman depicted is her grandmother. Chloe, who behaves more like a spoiled 15-year-old than someone pushing 30, steals the sketch from Adam Jensen, who acquired it from his brother, Jamie, under what Chloe thinks are dubious circumstances. But Jamie has been killed in a motorcycle crash, so no information is forthcoming from him.

The novel switches between the present, which finds Chloe and Adam first at odds, then conspiring to learn more about the sketch, and the past, which focuses on Matisse’s life with Lydia, one of his models and helpers, who appears as little more than a footnote in biographies of the great painter. In choosing to examine this aspect of Matisse’s life, Rehner provides an excellent subject for the historical part of the novel: a compelling relationship shrouded in mystery. Indeed, the sections dealing with Matisse and Lydia are gripping, as Lydia copes with the public’s mistaken perception of her as the painter’s mistress.

By contrast, the characters in the present are much weaker. Chloe and Adam come straight out of a stereotypical romance novel, and while the action of the plot is exciting, the actors, especially Chloe, are often annoying. Despite this, the novel is hard to put down: the art world Rehner chooses as her milieu is a fantastic place, and the author does a good job of dramatizing how some people obsessed with beauty are capable of killing for it.