Stealing the Scream

CEO Percival Davenport decides to retire and finds himself wondering what to do with his life. In Stealing the Scream by Theodore Carter, Percival returns to his art history roots and dives into being an artist with both feet. (Stealing the Scream well be released by Run Amok on September 15.)

His painting lessons improve his technique and before long he is painting like a professional. Percival holds a show but the critics call his work good, but more the style of a copyist than and originalist. He decides to prove them wrong and hires someone to break into famous museums and hang his paintings in their galleries. He also begins his obsession with Edvard Munch's "The Scream".

Before long Percival’s paintings are hanging in the Met in New York, the Louvre in Paris and several other art museums without anyone wondering how they had been acquired.  It takes a diligent security guard at the Met to try to piece together what is going on. When he calls attention to the painting in the Met, the curator is so embarrassed, he offers Leonard, the guard, the painting.

Leonard has soon amassed a collection of Percival Davenport originals that had been hanging in various museums. Now he sets out to find the artist and discover what is really going on.

Stealing the Scream is an imaginative story of artists and their obsessions and without giving too much away, The Scream is actually stolen.


Disclosure: I received this book from the publisher.