Art Theft is Just a Part of this Heart-Pounding Thriller

THE HIDDEN THINGS
Jamie Mason
Simon and Schuster/ Gallery
August 13, 2019


Carly Lidell is not your average fourteen-year-old. She survived an attack at her own front door and in the foyer from a local lowlife by fighting back and knocking out he attacker. The whole "thing," as Carly calls it was captured on video by the home security cameras and quickly went viral. Only the corner of a painting hanging in the foyer is visible, but the video is of great interest to several people. The picture is one of the works stolen, a minor one, in the notorious robbery at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1990. It seems that the painting has surfaced once before and in the process changed the lives of all involved. What could it be doing hanging in a suburban foyer? The players in this drama are Marcelline, John /Jonathan, Carly's stepfather, Owen Haig, and Roy Dorring. Four years earlier John had led Marcelline into a plan to sell the painting to an obscenely wealthy family rather than turn it into the FBI or the Museum. She nearly paid with her life and had to disappear. Owen was the agent for the family and has been obsessed with getting the art back ever since. Roy was just the sad-sack trying to make a buck, which is the entirety of his life. The viral video sets this group on a collision course. And Carly? She wants to know why her stepfather is so changed and acting so suspiciously since the "thing."

The Hidden Things is a fast-paced thriller with characters that are so fleshed out they jump off the page. Marcelline made a bad mistake and just wants her life back. John is a sociopath; Roy, a quintessential loser, and Owen can only be described as a "black hole" whose real motives are indecipherable to me. And Carly is bright, gifted, compassionate and could someday rule the world. I would give this novel an enthusiastic 5 stars, had it not bogged down a bit in the middle. Jamie Mason is a gifted storyteller with a sharp eye for characterization and pacing. I highly recommend The Hidden Things. Thanks to NetGalley and Gallery for an advance copy. The opinions are my own.

RATING- 4.5 Stars