What Meets the Eye

3.5 stars rounded up to 4. A debut crime novel that started out strong – intriguing characters and a plot centered around Margot Starling, a flamboyant up-and-coming new artist with a flair for the dramatic, who appears to have committed suicide. When our lead character Kate Myles, a former police officer turned private eye, is hired by Margot's father to dig deeper, she becomes enmeshed in figuring out a scheme involving art forgeries, shady gallery dealers, blackmail, and thrown in for good measure, the Russian mob and money laundering. While the first half held my interest, and I found Kate a strong protagonist, the story devolved for me in the last half where Kate seemed to make odd choices in pursuing her investigation and a lot of twists and turns left me scratching my head. I'll give this author points for coming up with a strong premise but for this reader the story veered off in directions that didn't make sense and the plot became too muddled by the end for me to recommend it. My thanks to Net Gallery for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.