Fifty years ago the Murray family lost the most valuable book in the world to the rival Stone family, who asserted a dubious right to keep it.
Fifty years later, grandson Johnny Murray, discovers where his legacy now lies.
That’s when everyone’s tribulations really begin.
BOOKS
The Picasso Provenance
Sarah Hastings is pretty, self-assured and nobody’s fool. But when she flies into New York to surprise her father on his birthday, surprise spirals into shock as she confronts a grotesque horror that sends her tumbling helplessly into a vortex of murder, vengeance and lies.
Desperate for help, she turns to family friend Adam Kennedy, an art dealer on the brink of a multi-million-dollar sale of Picasso paintings. Despite haunted by a dissonance from his past, Adam cannot resist her, but grows more concerned on finding Sarah’s ordeal has implications far beyond her distressing encounter . . . even going so far as murder.
THE PICASSO PROVENANCE is a complex, high-stakes thriller that not only maintains fast-paced tension throughout, but keeps you guessing to the very last paragraph on the very last page.
Death Stench
Charlie Close has guarded a secret ability for years: he can smell every material thing. From cancer to cutlery; from water to weaponry . . . if it has substance, Charlie can smell it. He has no choice.
But now his ability is growing stronger, becoming a curse. Now he can smell impending death from others . . . and he needs it to stop.
After he smells it streaming from a friend’s mother just days before she dies in a car crash, his blood runs cold. In desperation, Charlie seeks medical help . . . but now his secret is out.
DEATH STENCH is a compelling, contemporary, speculative thriller that will intrigue and appeal to anyone interested in the supposed military research into developing the ultimate stealth weapon . . . a psychic warrior who can deal death at a distance.
The Gutenberg Legacy
Fifty years ago, the Murray family lose possession of the most valuable book in the world: the 15th century Gutenberg Bible.
The rival Stone family, its new custodian, assert a dubious right to it and intend to keep it.
Fifty years later, grandson Johnny Murray discovers where his legacy now lies. Inspired by vengeance and the prospect of a multi-million pound payday, he arranges to take it back.
But Lewis Stone is no pushover.
That’s when the Murray family’s tribulations really begin as the dispute escalates from malice to murder.
What Reviewers Have Been Saying About THE PICASSO PROVENANCE
A WOW of a debut crime novel watch this author
. . . Crime and romantic plots interweave and all mysteries are resolved in a resounding end. A perfect crime novel. (Amazon.co.uk)
What is real, what is fake in art and life?
. . . takes straight you to the heart of the New York art market and some of its shady corners. (Amazon.com)
A page turner – excellent crime/mystery choice.
. . . just the right amount of steamy sex and gore. (Amazon.com)
More Murders than an Episode of Midsomer
An interesting debut from an author with a practical working knowledge in the global art market. (Amazon.co.uk)
BACKGROUND
Dann Farrell was born, grew up and attended university in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
He has been a gym instructor, taxi driver, teacher and health club proprietor before spending over twenty years trading antiques and fine art across the world.
Though he started writing while still at university, completing an egregiously embarrassing play titled “I pulled up an immovable stool”, before deciding he had been wildly presumptuous to imagine that, being such a callow youth, he had any right to write about anything.
Twenty years later, he began to scribble when he could. But business was demanding. Everyone, from the newly wed to the nearly dead, was clamoring for antiques, and sourcing a wide range of old decorative items and furniture was time-consuming. So, it was only toward the end of the twentieth century he buckled down to crafting what became his first novel: The Picasso Provenance.
Since then he has written a speculative thriller, Death Stench, that has been described as The Men Who Stare At Goats meets Stephen King’s Carrie.
The Gutenberg Legacy, which he has recently completed, is another standalone thriller based in the darker side of the antiques trade, but currently, he is working on a sequel to Death Stench, with a view to extending the storyline into at least a trilogy.
Dann lives in the countryside just outside Belfast.
BLOG
Art Sales Of The Century: Christie’s & Sotheby’s NYC 1999.
Christie’s and Sotheby’s NYC: Art Sales of the 20th Century . . . They certainly were for me, triggering as they did, the core idea of my first novel, The Picasso Provenance. Yes, and this scary fact reminds me just how long it took me to get my act together: another...
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