{"product_id":"the-eye-of-the-beholder-by-minette-marrin","title":"'The Eye of the Beholder' by Minette Marrin","description":"\u003ch4 data-start=\"45\" data-end=\"524\"\u003eTravelling through France with her husband, television journalist Jane insists on visiting an obscure château whose name she half-remembers.\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"45\" data-end=\"524\"\u003eSoon she's on the trail. Accumulating events around disputed paintings, forged documents, wartime secrets and suspicious deaths—it becomes an art-historical mystery in which questions of authenticity become inseparable from questions of motive.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"526\" data-end=\"976\"\u003eMarrin builds the novel around the unstable authority of looking. Paintings, archives and reputations all appear to offer evidence, yet each can be arranged to produce the desired story. Jane’s investigation moves between France, London and New York, following the possible connection between a seventeenth-century painter, a noble family’s collection and material someone has taken considerable trouble to bury. \u003cspan class=\"\" data-state=\"closed\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"978\" data-end=\"1315\"\u003eThe result is a distinctly late-1980s literary thriller: intelligent, research-heavy and preoccupied with the institutions that decide what counts as genuine. It will suit readers drawn to art crime, archival detection and protagonists whose curiosity is both their professional instrument and their most reliable route into catastrophe.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"1342\" data-end=\"1477\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst edition, Faber and Faber, 1988. Hardcover with dust jacket; light rubbing and surface wear to jacket, internally clean and sound.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45860645240915,"sku":null,"price":18.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/Yourparagraphtext-2026-07-24T164130.008.png?v=1784875400","url":"https:\/\/bowerbooks.com\/products\/the-eye-of-the-beholder-by-minette-marrin","provider":"bower books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}