Ponzi and Picasso

Henry Classico, the esteemed New York art dealer, crosses the line when his genuine love of art is co-opted by greed. After he squanders most of the capital from his private equity art fund, the sub prime mortgage crisis hits hard and threatens to bury him. Desperate to raise cash, he sells the same rare Picasso twice-- first to a Russian oligarch and then to one of his lovers. His only redress is to travel to the exotic underbelly of the Beijing art scene to commission the world's best forger. Unfortunately, he double-crosses the local Mafia/Triad kingpin whose tentacles reach all the way to New York.

Alouisha Jones met Henry Classico at the Yale MFA art exhibition, where he was trolling for his latest art find. Instead of a show at his gallery, he offers her a job as his sentry-receptionist. Reluctantly, the former scholarship student accepts and is quickly seduced by her boss's glamorous, bling-enshrined world.

Soon, her innocence and career are on a dangerous collision course with the art establishment. Unwittingly caught in Classico's subterfuge, she acquires the power to take down the entire global art market. She is fraught with indecision--do the right thing and be vilified by the art world, or do nothing and be guilty of collusion. Tomorrow, her name will appear on the front page of every newspaper--but not to applaud her life's work.

If you ever wanted to understand the events lurking behind a black on black painting that sells for tens of millions of dollars, Rochelle Ohrstrom's debut novel scrapes away the veneer of art-speak gloss and reveals the grit and dirt rabbit-glued between the stretchers.