A Wealth of Deception by Trish Esden

A Wealth of Deception (A Scandal Mountain Antiques Mystery, #2)

by Trish Esden

Danger, art, and a touch of romance collide in Trish Esden’s second exquisitely crafted Scandal Mountain Antiques mystery, perfect for fans of Jane K. Cleland and Connie Berry.

Some people are willing to die for their art. Others are willing to kill for it.

When Vermont antique and art dealer Edie Brown discovers an unsettlingly dark collage by the famed reclusive “outsider” artist known only as Vespa, she opens a Pandora’s Box of deception and danger.

Edie teams up with Uncle Tuck and Kala to investigate the background of the collage but only uncover secrets that are more disturbing than the artwork itself. As Edie tracks down the validity of the piece, she stumbles into an art underground where some people are willing to kill to keep their schemes a secret.  

Esden expertly crafts a complex cast of characters, a breathtakingly gorgeous setting, and a twisty plot that often poses more questions than answers.

Reviewed by annieb123 on

4 of 5 stars

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A Wealth of Deception is the second Scandal Mountain Antiques shopfront cozy mystery by Trish Esden. Released 18th April 2023 by Crooked Lane Books, it's 336 pages and is available in hardcover, audio, and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately.

This is a well written and engaging small-town shopfront cozy mystery featuring an amateur sleuth who is an arts and antiques seller and historian, her uncle, and friends/family. She has an interesting back-story since her mother is currently in prison on art fraud/forgery and she's come back to her family antiques store to help try to keep it afloat after her mother's trial and incarceration. 

It's populated by the usual cast of oddball and eccentric characters, some vaguely threatening competitors in the antiques milieu, and an interesting and well researched plot revolving around visual arts, authentication and provenance, and whitewashing and fraud (and murder) in the rarefied high end arts world. 

Although it's the second book in the series, it works perfectly well as a standalone. There are currently two books in the series, with an open ended implication of further adventures for Edie & co. 

The unabridged audiobook has a run time of 9 hours 22 minutes and is narrated by Emily Ellet. She has an oddly husky/gravelly voice with an appealing musicality/cadence. Her accent in this read is unobtrusive midwestern American, and it soon fades into the background (in a good way). The sound and production quality are high throughout the recording. 

Four stars. The violence occurs off-scene and the language is clean. There is frank discussion in the text about standards of ethics in mental health and residential care facilities and providers, along with psychological trauma and patient abuse. 

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes. 

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Reading updates

  • 29 April, 2023: Started reading
  • 29 April, 2023: Finished reading
  • 29 April, 2023: Reviewed