The Price of Inheritance by Karin Tanabe is focused on the auction industry, specifically Christie's and Sotheby's. Carolyn Everett is Christie's antique furniture specialist but, despite being a rising star, she is fired from the New York office after a scandal involving stolen furniture. She returns to her home town of Newport, Rhode Island and takes a part time position at a local antique store. While out scouting for acquisitions she comes across an artifact which she is puzzled about. Her search for the provenance leads her to a Marine Captain stationed nearby and uncovers more than she bargained for.
My thoughts:
I was intrigued with the story because I once worked for Christie's rival, Sotheby's, in London. Auctions can be exciting and Carolyn had certainly become caught up in the chase of valuable objects. However, I found the story of the bowl that might or might not be an antique and the reasons why it's antiquity was covered up by (spoiler alert) a teacher at a local university and how Carolyn discovered where the bowl was headed to based on her dealings with a furniture collector. And I'm still puzzling over why Caroline gave the pottery teacher the phone number of the teacher's ex boyfriend when Carolyn asked her to call her. That was actually one of the book club questions in the back. None of the story made sense to me but I did enjoy the descriptions of Newport.
