Lisa Barr’s Woman on Fire is not to be mistaken for the recent movie, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, a lovely historical period piece on film. While they both deal with artists, Woman on Fire is a contemporary art heist novel set in Chicago, Berlin, Montana, Miami, and Amsterdam.
Jules Roth, an intrepid young reporter talks Dan Mansfield, the lead investigative reporter for a Chicago newspaper, into giving her a job. He wants her to find a painting, the Expressionist artist Ernst Engel’s most famous work, Woman on Fire, which was looted by the Nazis during World War II. Mansfield’s friend Ellis Baum, a shoe designer, is dying, and Mansfield wants the painting found before his friend passes. The model for the painting was Baum’s mother. Jules is joined in her search for the painting by Baum’s grandson, Adam Baum, an artist himself. The villain, Margaux de Laurent, a complete sociopath, wants the painting herself as it once belonged to her grandfather and was a major element in her childhood.
Woman on Fire is fast-paced art-heist thriller I read in one sitting. I enjoyed it because it combined two of my favorite genres: art fiction and thrillers. Lisa Barr, an investigative reporter herself, brings first-hand knowledge of reporting to the book as well as an extensive knowledge of art, especially Abstract Impressionist art (called Entartete Kunst or degenerate art in Germany because it offended Hitler’s aesthetics). There is enough tension and plot twists and turns to keep any reader engaged.
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Woman on Fire (Harper, March 1, 2022) is available through:
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You can read my review of Barr’s debut novel, Fugitive Colors, here.
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