The Storm Over Paris--A World War II Art Thriller

 The Storm Over Paris, a debut novel by William Ian Grubman, is about a courageous Jewish art gallery owner in German occupied Paris during World War II who conceives of an audacious plan to save art from the Nazis.  This is a story line that captures my interest.  So I agreed to review this book and received a copy from publicist Wiley Saichek.

                           

The strategy that protagonist Mori Rothstein uses to save the art looks like collaboration with the Nazis.  There's a book that might seem similar called The Woman Who Heard Color by  Kelly Jones which I found very problematic.  It seemed to me that the art dealer Hanna Schmid in the Kelly Jones novel really was collaborating with the Nazis. So I would like to emphasize that Mori Rothstein only appeared to be collaborating.  I considered him quite admirable.  On the other hand, I thought that the Kelly Jones character was seriously ethically challenged.

Mori's son, Emile, played a crucial role in this plot to save the art, and his son Jacob was also involved to a lesser extent. The risks they all took made The Storm Over Paris very suspenseful.

The book did leave me with an unsolved mystery.  A Caravaggio painting that probably doesn't exist of the Biblical expulsion of Hagar was prominent in The Storm Over Paris.  The expulsion of Hagar has been painted by many artists, but I couldn't find one dealing with this subject by Caravaggio when I ran searches. The cover of this novel looks like an expulsion of Hagar. It's probably intended to represent the presumably fictional Caravaggio painting.  The art isn't credited, so I wondered who was responsible for that illustration. I uploaded it to Google Images, and it was correctly identified as the cover for The Storm Over Paris, but no name was given for the artist.  I'm just curious about the cover, and would like to know more about it.

I also wondered if Mori identified with Hagar because those in power in the country that he had always thought was his home didn't consider him welcome to remain there.

I recommend The Storm Over Paris to those who love World War II thrillers and to those who love fiction centered on art.  This was a wonderful example of both these types of books.