A heist? A murder? It’s villain’s choice.
Planning a Heist
Our new release, The Heist, got its start on a rainy Monday a while back, when hubs and I attended a behind-the-scenes tour at our small Iowa town’s exquisite art museum. A new exhibit was about to open, and we were treated to detailed descriptions of the process of locating and ordering traveling exhibits, shipping them, storing them, uncrating them, hanging them, insuring their safety, and repacking them.
You must know by now that hubs is a criminologist by profession. It didn’t take us long to be looking for vulnerable spots in the museum’s process, and by the end of the day, with a little internet research on the high stakes world of stolen paintings, we had our basic plot sketched out.
Our next problem was—what painting should be stolen? Clearly, we couldn’t go with an existing well-known piece of art. We opted to create The Three Maids, an entirely fictional trio of medium sized Impressionist portraits, based on what we knew about Monet, Manet, Renoir, Caillebotte, and the women they painted. We’ve put so much detail into the paintings’ descriptions that I keep expecting to see them when I enter an Impressionist display. If no one has painted them yet, I definitely think someone should!
I’ll leave the details of how the actual heist was planned, carried out, and (we hope) foiled for readers to discover—we hope you enjoy reading The Heist as much as we enjoyed creating it
The Heist
July, 2014
B&B Publishing
ASIN: B00LNE7366
Romantic Suspense, 81,000 words
Heat rating: Three Flames (Warnings: explicit sex, m/f; light bdsm; sex toys)
BUY LINK
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LNE7366
BLURB
A special-order art theft? Tedious, but seamless – until small town museum director Kara Daniels calls in the experts. Furious her favorite trio of priceless impressionist paintings has been stolen from its traveling exhibit on her watch, Kara is determined to save not only the paintings, but her future in the art world. She’ll stop at nothing to entrap the thief.
Ted Springs knows the underbelly of the criminal world a little closer than he might like—but he’s turned it to good advantage, first as a police officer, and now as detective for the Upper Midwest Arts Council. His job? To guarantee the security of the valuable paintings in the Council’s traveling exhibits.
Heat sizzles when Ted and Kara collide—can they work together, before it’s too late?
EXCERPT
“I and my staff have already done fairly thorough background checks on all the museum employees,” Ted said.
“Oh.” Kara scowled. “I’m not sure I like that.”
“But you expected it?”
“Of course. At some point.”
“I believe in being efficient. Even before certain added incentives.”
“I can always change my mind. I don’t know a thing about you.”
“You know enough. I have large hands.” Ted chuckled when she winced. “I’ve worked for the Upper Midwest Arts Council for five years.”
“And before that?”
“I was a Chicago cop.”
“Oh.”
“I went into the army right out of high school and completed my BA degree at U.I.C. while on the force. Funny, isn’t it? While you were working on your MA at the University of Chicago, I was patrolling the streets of Hyde Park and South Chicago.”
“Really?”
“That’s right.”
“Maybe we bumped into each other.”
“I highly doubt that. I wouldn’t forget bumping into you. Remember?”
“Oh, right.” Kara’s flush returned.
[…] You can read more about how the De Kooning painting was stolen and recovered at this link: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/16/woman-ochre-de-koonings-painting-from-theft-to-its-return-home.html. I was fascinated to know how close we came in our story to creating the variables that make such a heist possible—but then Mr. Kraft is a criminologist, so we had a leg up. If you’d like to read more about how we stumbled onto our story, check out our release announcement from 2014: https://adrianakraft.com/?p=6076 […]