The Modigliani Scandal
The Modigliani Scandal
A high-speed, high-stakes thriller from Ken Follett,
the grand master of international action and
suspense
A fabulous ″lost masterpiece″ becomes the ultimate prize-for an art historian whose ambition consumes everyone around her, an angry young painter with a plan for revenge on the art establishment, and a desperate gallery owner who may have double-crossed his own life away. Behind the elegance and glamour of the art world, anything goes—theft, forgery, betrayal, and maybe even murder....
PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF KEN FOLLETT
JACKDAWS
″[A] celebration of uncommon courage and unlikely heroes.″
—People
″Great entertainment.″
—The Baltimore Sun
CODE TO ZERO
″Gripping.″
—The New York Times
″This spy thriller is Follett at his best.″
—People
THE HAMMER OF EDEN
″Hammer
will nail readers to their seats.″
—People
″Follett ratchets up the Richter scale of suspense.″
—USA Today
THE THIRD TWIN
″Follett really knows how to tell a story.″
—The Atlanta journal-Constitution
″His scenes whip along. And his ending is absolutely smashing.″
—The Virginian-Pilot
A PLACE CALLED FREEDOM
″An altogether entertaining reading experience.″
—Minneapolis Star Tribune
A DANGEROUS FORTUNE
″A terrific page-turner. Careening thrills ... telling historical detail ... genuine surprises.″
—Los Angeles Times
″Relentlessly suspenseful.″
—The New York Times
NIGHT OVER WATER
″An excruciatingly taut drama on the aerial equivalent of the Orient Express ... thoroughly satisfying ... his best since
Eye of the Needle.″
—Publishers Weekly
LIE DOWN WITH LIONS
″Sheer suspense.″
—The Washington Post
ʺVintage Follett.... This is his most ambitious novel and it succeeds admirably.... Tense, vivid, excating ... satisfies on deep levels.ʺ
—USA Today
ON WINGS OF EAGLES
″Absolutely electric with suspense.″
—San Francisco Chronicle
″A marvelous, rare, terrific read.... A superb edge-of-the-seat true story that is as exciting as a novel.″
—USA Today
THE MAN FROM ST. PETERSBURG
″Ken Follett has done it once more ... goes down with the ease and impact of a well-prepared martini.ʺ
—The New York Time Book Review
THE KEY TO REBECCA
″A top-flight adventure thriller ... violence, intrigue, and exotic passions ... a vivid page-turner.″
—The Wieshington Post
″The most exciting novel in years.″
—The Cincinnati Enquire
TRIPLE
″One of the liveliest thrillers of the year.... Follett is a master of crafty plot and incredible detail.... A sizzling narrative.″
—Time
EYE OF THE NEEDLE
″Really thrilling.″
—The New York Times Book Review
″An absolutely terrific thriller, so pulse-pounding, so ingenious in its plotting, and so frighteningly realistic that you simply cannot stop reading.″
—Publishers Weekly
ALSO BY KEN FOLLETT
The Modigliani Scandal
Paper Money
Eye of the Needle
Triple
The Key to Rebecca
The Man from St. Petersburg
On Wings of Eagles
Lie Down with Lions
The Pillars of the Earth
Night over Water
A Dangerous Fortune
A Place Called Freedom
The Third Twin
The Hammer of Eden
Code to Zero
Jackdaws
SIGNET
Published by New American Library, a division of
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,
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Published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Pen-
guin Group (USA) Inc. Published by arrangement with the author.
First Signet Printing, May 1985
30
Copyright @ Zachary Stone, 1976 Introduction copyright @ Holland Copyright Corporation, 1985
All rights reserved
REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCAREGISTRADA
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
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eISBN : 978-1-101-43662-2
INTRODUCTION
IN A MODERN THRILLER the hero generally saves the world. Traditional adventure stories are more modest: The central character merely saves his own life, and perhaps the life of a faithful friend or a plucky girl. In less sensational novels—the middlebrow, well-told narratives that have been the staple diet of readers for more than a century—there is less at stake, but still a character′s efforts, struggles, and choices determine his destiny in a dramatic fashion.
I don′t actually believe that life is like that. In reality, circumstances quite beyond our control usually determine whether we live or die, become happy or miserable, strike it rich or lose everything. For example: Most rich people inherit their money. Most well-fed people simply had the luck to be bom in an af fluent country. Most happy people were born into loving families, and most miserable people had crazy parents.
I′m not a fatalist, nor do I believe that everything in life is blind chance. We do not control our lives the way a chess player controls his pieces, but life is not roulette either. As usual, the truth is complicated. Mechanisms beyond our control—and sometimes beyond our understanding—debermine a person′s fate, yet the choices he makes have consequences, if not the consequences he anticipated.
In
The Modigliani Scandal
I tried to write a new kind of novel, one that would reflect the subtle subordination of individual freedom to more powerful machinery. In this immodest project I failed. It may be that such a novel cannot be written: Even if Life is not about individual choice, perhaps Literature is.
What I wrote, in the end, was a lighthearted crime story in which an assortment of people, mostly young, get up to a variety of capers, none of which turns out quite as expected. The critics praised it as sprightly, ebullient, light, bright, cheery, light (again), and fizzy. I was disappointed that they had not noted my serious intentions.
Now I no longer look on the book as a failure. It is fizzy, and none the worse for that. The fact that it is so different from the book I intended to write should not have surprised me. After all, it rather proves my point.
—KEN FOLLETT, 1985