Fugitive Colors

Margaret Maron

10/21/2007

When Oscar Naumann is killed in an accident, Lt. Sigrid Harald sinks into a deep depression. She had not known him a year earlier and could not have guessed the impact one man could have had on her life. Now she is left with his belongings, his art, his memory, and her grief.

The movers and shakers in the New York art scene want to have the retrospective show promised by Naumann before his death. Now his paintings will be worth more than they already were. Four gallery owners, Hal DePietro, Victor Germondi, Hester Kohn, and Arnold Callahan, want to show the work they have and bring in other pieces. But they need Harald's permission since she is now the owner of all his work.

When Harald finally returns to the police department about a month after Naumann's death, the homicide department is still in a nebulous state. They had a colleague die in the line of duty about a month earlier and another one transfer. They don't know if Harald is coming back now that she is wealthy. But she has no intention of quitting. She has agreed to meet DePietro at Naumann's New York apartment to look at Naumann's work that is there. When she arrives at the apartment she finds DePietro dead in the bedroom. She is glad she has already returned to duty when she calls her department in to investigate.

Fugitive Colors is the last book Margaret Maron wrote in her Sigrid Harald series. That's too bad since there are more stories that could be told in the lives of the characters. Not that I'm complaining about the replacement series featuring Judge Deborah Knott (one of my favorite series); I just would like more of these, too. The main mystery is average, but the strength of the series characters' stories makes this book readable whether the reader knows their background or not. The secondary murder mystery is interesting with an unexpected, understandable twist. Enjoy.

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One Coffee With
Death of a Butterfly
Death in Blue Folders
The Right Jack
Baby Doll Games
Corpus Christmas
Past Imperfect
Fugitive Colors