The Scam Artist: The Other Bosch

In the late seventies, after three decades of postwar prosperity, the French Miracle has stalled, giving way to crippling strikes, protest marches, fuel shortages, and increased global competition. A wave of terrorism-bank heists, kidnappings, and assassinations-also plagues France. But ex-spy and New England schoolmaster Charlie Baker is unfazed. Aiming to escape his covert past by becoming a serious painter, he holes up in Paris's Left Bank, surviving as a part-time journalist. Soon enough he's embroiled in the theft of the famous painting, L'Escamoteur (The Conjuror), by Hieronymus Bosch, in which a con man dupes an unwitting victim. While the thieves demand ransom for the painting's return, Baker comes to question its authenticity and sets out to identify the real-life scam artist who tried to pass himself off for the master. Along the way, Baker's own murky history catches up with him. The Scam Artist: The Other Bosch, Caleb Bach's sequel to Shadowing Botticelli's Beauty, weaves true-to-life encounters with famous Latin American writers and musicians with recent fi ndings regarding the native son from 's-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands, where, in 2016, the Bosch500 Festival will mark the quincentenary of the great artist's passing.