Review: Shooting Gallery by Hailey Lind

This is the second book in the Art Lover's Mystery by Hailey Lind. This story opens with Annie Kincaid finding a body hanging in a tree a the Brock Museum during a sculptural exhibit. As it turns out, it is the body of the sculptor of the exhibit.  While the police are there investigating, a group wandering through another exhibit becomes over wrought from Stendhal Syndrome, and faints.  This additional commotion allows for a painting to be removed and stolen right off the wall.  One of Annie's good friends, Bryan, was in this group and is being blamed by Agnes Brock as working with the thief.  Annie, of course, doesn't want her friend to take the fall for this and decides to work to find the painting and return it to the museum.  Additionally, another patron strikes up a conversation with Annie and upon finding out her art connections, asks her to assist in retrieving their sculpture from an artist who is doing some repair work on it, but whom has now refused to return it.

In addition to the secondary characters that we met in the first book, Annie's mother makes an appearance in this book.  She has come to town for the funeral of the sculptor who was hanged.  Apparently Annie's parents were went to college with the dead sculptor, as well as the sculptor Annie is trying to convince to return the statue he is repairing.  The hi jinx and floundering around that happened in the first book is once again present in this book.  Annie reminds me greatly of Stephanie Plum, in her bungling and fumbling to solve the cases, that of course, become intertwined.  

Each chapter is begun with a quote from Annie's infamous Grandfather, the world famous art forger,  as he is doing publicity for his published novel that we were introduced to in the first book.  I really enjoyed this variety of ways he makes art relevant to so many different and varied seemingly unrelated fields.  We still don't have a solid love interest for Annie, and I like that the field is still wide open. Plus we are seeing more sides to some of the secondary characters and can't wait to find out more. I gave this book 4 stars on Goodreads.





Goodreads:

Modernism isn't Annie's thing, but even she is surprised to discover that the "sculpture" in a prestigious gallery's grisly new exhibition is an all-too-real corpse-the artist's. Meanwhile, a Chagall painting is stolen from the Brock Museum, and Annie's old friend Bryan is accused of being in on the fix. 

To track down the missing Chagall, she'll need the dubious assistance of a certain sexy art thief. And if Michael-or whatever his real name may be-isn't distraction enough, Annie's mother shows up in town, acting strangely. Annie's got to solve these mysteries, and fast-because art is long, but life can be very, very short.