Barbara Parker - The Perfect Fake (2006)
Reviewed by David J. Montgomery
Barbara Parker takes a break from her popular series to bring readers a mostly satisfying stand-alone thriller, The Perfect Fake. Tom Fairchild, an ex-con trying to get his life back together (aren't they all?), is hired to duplicate a rare old map that was destroyed when its owner was murdered.
It seems unlikely that Fairchild would be able to pull off this feat, but Parker does a halfway convincing job of explaining how he might. Along the way, Fairchild rushes from Miami to London and on to Florence, usually in the company of the alluring daughter of the man who hired him.
Although the characters and the story's improbable twists seem more like fodder from a daytime soap opera than a thriller novel, The Perfect Fake still does a reasonable job of keeping the reader's interest, due mostly to the subplot involving cartography.
Posted by David J. Montgomery in Book Reviews | Permalink
