About A Real Piece of Work

The Ama­zon Best­seller that launched a series…

A Real Piece of Work, the 1st nov­el in the Dako­ta Stevens Mys­tery Series by Chris Orcutt, delves into a world of forged and stolen art, secret iden­ti­ties and mur­der.

At the close of a case in Key West, PI Dako­ta Stevens and his asso­ciate Svet­lana Krüsh return to New York, where the city is in the grips of its worst bliz­zard since 1888. When an art deal­er stum­bles in from the storm and hires them to find a stolen paint­ing, they think it’s just anoth­er case, but in no time they’re neck-deep in a world of unsta­ble artists, seduc­tive gallery own­ers, mys­te­ri­ous col­lec­tors, dead­ly hench­men and a stun­ning femme fatale.

In a thrill-ride of a mys­tery that leads from Man­hat­tan to the Catskills to Wash­ing­ton, D.C., what begins as the sim­ple recov­ery of a paint­ing soon reveals an inter­na­tion­al art scam and a chill­ing secret hid­den for decades.

Fast-paced and intel­li­gent, A Real Piece of Work is a pristine­ly well-writ­ten page-turn­er for read­ers who like a great sto­ry told with lit­er­ary style.

“Action, lust, dan­ger, style and wit­ty repar­tee, Orcut­t’s A Real Piece of Work is a work of art. (5 stars)” — IndieRead­er

Buy: Ama­zon

 

 

Excerpt from A Real Piece of Work

Before the Lati­no took anoth­er step, I threw my cof­fee in his face and kicked him in the balls. Shay gasped. He dou­bled over, his face con­tort­ing with anger and nau­sea. Knees bent, he shot out a jab with some horse­rad­ish on it. I tried slip­ping it, but it grazed the side of my head, his knuck­les prac­ti­cal­ly dig­ging grooves in my scalp. Luck­i­ly his bud­dies stayed on the side­lines. Wait­ing until he was upright, I shuf­fled inside him and drove my elbow through his jaw. I felt the sur­pris­ing­ly soft crunch of bone, and he land­ed hard on the walk­way.

Before I could take a defen­sive stance, the oth­er two moved in swing­ing the ham­mers. I sprang back­wards, but not enough. The claw of one gashed my par­ka across the chest. Half-run­ning, half-skat­ing to the rusty bar­rel, I grabbed a length of two-by-four and spun around. As they charged me I rammed the wood end-first into the white guy’s bald head, which col­lid­ed into the black guy’s bald head. Dazed, they dropped their ham­mers and crum­pled into the snow­bank.

God for­give me, but it was the best 8‑ball shot I’d ever made.

Mean­while, I’d for­got­ten about the Lati­no. When I turned around, he pound­ed me on the thigh with a ham­mer, right on the mus­cle. I buck­led to one knee. The wood clonked on the stoop. The pain was so intense that I want­ed to scream, but couldn’t.

Enough of this shit. I yanked my coat open, reveal­ing the .45 revolver. The Lati­no smiled at me with a scald­ed face. He dropped the ham­mer. I got slow­ly to my feet, strug­gling to hide the pain. My eyes were tear­ing as I caught my breath.

“Look, I’m only say­ing this once. You go back to this Mr. Talese…you tell him Miss Con­nol­ly will be staying…till her lease is up. Got me?”

The Lati­no man mum­bled an affir­ma­tive, but the oth­er two were too stunned to answer. I limped past them, up the steps. “Now get lost.”

Inside I stopped at the foot of the stairs and hung onto the ban­is­ter.

“Damn that smarts.” I wiped my eyes.

Shay sat on the stairs watch­ing me. “You burned that guy with your cof­fee.”

“You use whatever’s avail­able, Miss Con­nol­ly. Please, give me a moment.”

“I feel bad. What can I do?”

“Go away.”

 

Is A Real Piece of Work based in fact?

Yes. While this is a work of fic­tion, it is also the prod­uct of won­der­ing “what if” in rela­tion to a num­ber of his­tor­i­cal facts. In a famous 1964 Play­boy inter­view, the bril­liant Vladimir Nabokov had this to say about the mys­te­ri­ous process by which he began to assem­ble a work of fic­tion:

“All I know is that at a very ear­ly stage of the nov­el­’s devel­op­ment I get this urge to gar­ner bits of straw and fluff…After the first shock of recognition—a sud­den sense of ‘this is what I’m going to write’—the nov­el starts to breed by itself…”

For me, the two main “bits of straw and fluff” were these:

1. The fraud com­mit­ted by con­vict­ed art deal­er Ely Sakhai.

2. Even after 60 years (since the end of WWII), over 100,000 works of art were still miss­ing; yet, pre­vi­ous­ly lost works were being dis­cov­ered with reg­u­lar­i­ty.

There were many oth­er bits of straw and fluff that con­tributed to the nov­el­’s coa­lesc­ing, includ­ing the Mon­u­ments Men (now the sub­ject of a major motion pic­ture), the Munich Cen­tral Col­lect­ing Point, and the Quedlin­burg Hoard; how­ev­er, once I became curi­ous, it was real­ly the arti­cles and gov­ern­ment records them­selves that prod­ded me.

While writ­ing the nov­el, I col­lect­ed over 2,000 pages of research on art loot­ing dur­ing WWII, art forg­ing, and resti­tu­tion. Sources of mate­r­i­al include the Nation­al Archives, the Nation­al Gallery Library and the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art web­site.

I found this to be a fas­ci­nat­ing sub­ject, and hope­ful­ly you will, too. To that end, if you pur­chase the nov­el, you’ll receive a pass­word (pre­vent­ing spoil­ers) that will give you access to PDFs of the dozens of gov­ern­ment reports and oth­er doc­u­ments I con­sult­ed in writ­ing the book. One exam­ple I can give you (with­out cre­at­ing a spoil­er) is this PDF of Art Claims Filed with US Govt by 1956. It’s a HUGE file show­ing close to 10,000 claims of lost art, so the idea that thou­sands of pieces are still float­ing around in the art world isn’t near­ly as far-fetched as it might seem.

 

Does the story borrow at all from your own life?

In a way, yes. Grow­ing up, I thought I want­ed to become an FBI field agent and/or a sci­en­tist at the FBI Lab. In col­lege, I start­ed out as a foren­sic chem­istry major and also took cours­es in crim­i­nol­o­gy and crim­i­nal­is­tics. I spent sev­er­al weeks shad­ow­ing a sci­en­tist with the Mass­a­chu­setts State Crime Lab, vis­it­ing the lab sev­er­al times and watch­ing him tes­ti­fy in court.

By the time I grad­u­at­ed, with a degree in phi­los­o­phy, I was more inter­est­ed in read­ing about detec­tives than I was in becom­ing one, so the Dako­ta Stevens series rep­re­sents some­thing of Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Tak­en.”

Put anoth­er way, James Joyce said that all fic­tion is “imag­ined auto­bi­og­ra­phy,” so the Dako­ta books are how I’d like to imag­ine my life might have turned out had I gone through with my FBI plans.

 

What bonus material does the novel include?

At the end of the nov­el, in the “About the Nov­el” sec­tion, there is a pass­word that will give you access to the Dako­ta Stevens case files, where you’ll find dozens of arti­cles and gov­ern­ment doc­u­ments used in the research for the book.

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