Until The Da Vinci Code, art books and thrillers seemed to be unlikely bedmates. However, Jeffrey Archer’s bestselling thriller False Impression follows in the same vein as Dan Brown’s book, and successfully combines a heart-pumping storyline with the sale of a 19th century Van Gogh painting. Archer’s books have sold over 120 million copies worldwide, the presumable result of his Oxford education and ability to piece together a compelling plotline.
Art historian Anna Petrescu is Archer’s likeable heroine. Her character combines intelligence, athleticism and sheer wit to maneuver around her treacherous boss, a powerful New York banker named Bryce Fenston who has a penchant for art and underhanded dealings. Jack Delaney also plays a central role as the FBI agent investigating Fenston and brings a touch of endearing humor to the otherwise serious storyline. A host of secondary characters, including a Romanian hit woman, an elegant English heiress and a Japanese business magnate also play invaluable roles and add to the international appeal of the thriller.
Archer integrates 9-11 and its effects as central elements to the storyline in an effective manner, though his discourse is slightly clichéd at times. His evocation of this landmark event lends the book a touch of reality in the midst of a series of remarkable events. The reader journeys from New York to London and from Bucharest to Tokyo as the characters fixate on acquiring the painting by desperately seeking to one-up each other. Petrescu is on a desperate flight from the vindictive Fenston and his hired assassin, as she craftily moves the painting across continents and attempts to bring justice to the painting’s rightful owner.
The author puts together an appropriate number of twists and turns to keep the reader involved, but without completely departing from reality or provoking too much contemplation within the book’s five hundred pages. One example of the cat and mouse aspect of the plot (and the readability of the book) comes with the following: “If he’d dozed off, even for a moment, Jack feared that Crew Cut would have moved in and stolen the crate, although he hadn’t spotted her since she boarded the plane for London.”
False Impression is a perfect vacation novel or an appropriate book to distract from intense academic study. Entertaining, intriguing, and competently interwoven plot elements combine to make reading the thriller a satisfying experience, with the added bonus of catching a glimpse of complexities within the art world. Archer brings Van Gogh’s famous self portrait off the museum walls and into the reader’s direct vantage point in his creation of a provocative page turner.