A shady art dealer treks through a Manhattan blizzard to hire private detective Dakota Stevens to find a stolen painting. Then, not an hour later, Dakota and his partner are nearly run down by a car and the client disappears. This is A REAL PIECE OF WORK, a mystery that delves into a world of forged and stolen art, secret identities and murder.

In a case that leads from Manhattan to the Catskills to Washington, D.C., what begins as the simple recovery of a painting soon reveals an international art scam and a chilling secret that has remained hidden since WWII.

Dakota Stevens is a modern PI, medium-boiled, who never drinks while on a case. As a former FBI agent with experience in the field and the lab, Dakota combines the wit and grit of PIs Marlowe and Spenser with the ratiocination of Sherlock Holmes. However his Watson is anything but. A Ukrainian-American chess champion with runway legs, predator eyes and fluency in seven languages, Svetlana Krüsh brings worldly panache to their cases, or, as Svetlana would have you believe, she "solves the crimes and handles the money."

With nods to the classics of the noir detective tradition, A REAL PIECE OF WORK features a cast of familiar characters revitalized for modern times: the gorgeous redheaded artist who is as skilled with a hatchet as she is a paintbrush; the rapacious gallery owner with exquisite taste in art—and men; the bookish and beautiful museum art expert; the mysterious Middle Eastern agent; and the unseen nemesis with a chilling voice and sadistic henchmen.

Combining an intricate plot, intense narrative drive, and a highly sensual story with strong cinematic potential, A REAL PIECE OF WORK is the first novel in a projected series of adventures featuring Dakota and Svetlana.


Click here to read excerpts from the novel.


A REAL PIECE OF WORK
©2008 by Chris Orcutt