Fred Taylor Mystery Series

Fred Taylor, a veteran of unspecified clandestine services that have caused him to spend hard times in Southeast Asia, finds himself at loose ends in Boston. A late-night chance encounter in the city's Beacon Hill area throws his lot in with eccentric art collector Clayton Reed. Reed has been tricked by a young man as unscrupulous as he is ignorant into examining and considering for purchase a collection of paintings whose presence in the U.S. seems, at best, informal.
Fred, sensing Reed's naiveté in matters of personal security, volunteers to guarantee that security at the same time as Reed's acumen as a connoisseur astounds Fred. How could Reed just walk away from the situation with what he later gloatingly describes as "a prize worth more than the gross domestic product of Bulgaria."
What Reed has purchased appears to be a painting by one of the most important artists of the Italian Renaissance. But is it what it seems? Can The Madonna of the Apes be a forgery? How did it come to be, so quietly, in Boston? These questions propel Reed and Fred into an increasingly murderous tangle, guided only by the assurances of a sequence of art dealers who lie as easily as they withhold the truth about the painting, its true nature, and its history.
Nicholas Kilmer is the author of five previous Fred Taylor art mysteries.

Dirty Linen

by Nicholas Kilmer

Published 12 March 1999

A cache of old erotic paintings is purchased clandestinely at a benefit seaside auction, under the noses of competing dealers and of the would-be high society of Westport, Massachusetts. Boston collector Clayton Reed and his agent, Fred Taylor, must provide a cloak of respectability for the collection - and then defend it from the increasingly violent enthusiasm of others who suspect its value only after the sale. For word gets out that these pictures may illuminate the dark side of a major artist. How did the late Lord Hanford come to have such pictures? What of his sudden death? What about that young and lovely American widow? As the nature of the collection is revealed, so too is its dubious history - which leads from murder and double-dealing in the margins of the Boston and London art worlds, back through time until a shocking crime of Victorian prudery is laid bare.