Lesson In Red by Marie Hummel

 

Maggie Richter is the copy editor/publicist for the Roque Museum in Los Angeles  although her dream is to be a fulltime journalist.  She has tons of contacts throughout the LA art world so she seems the perfect choice when her mentor, Janis Roque, has a problem that she needs solved but in a discreet fashion.

Brenae Brasil was an up and coming art student at LAAC, the Los Angeles Art College, which is tightly aligned with the Roque Museum.  Brasil's art was cutting edge and tended to make people uncomfortable as she told the truth as she saw it.  But her potential is cut off prematurely when she kills herself.  Before she died, she created her most controversial art work.  It is a video work that shows Brasil having sex with an unnamed man; a man she insists pressured her into the sex and who had the influence to end her budding career.  

Janis wants to know if the allegations are true as the video was not discovered at the time of Brenae's death.  Was someone on the museum staff guilty of this crime?  Was Brenae's death really a suicide or was someone getting rid of a career-ending allegation?  Janis wants Maggie to go undercover at the museum and LAAC, talk to the students who knew Brenae and determine which staff might have been involved.  Maggie will have Ray, a detective she had been involved with in the past to help.  Can Maggie and Ray find the answers and validate Brenae's work?

This is the second novel in the Maggie Richter series.  Ray is a character from the first novel as well.  This narrative is told from Maggie's viewpoint and is confused since she is slowly unraveling the secrets of the museum and college.  She only has incomplete information and is filling in the pieces but readers used to third person narratives may find the story vague.  There are also many characters, administrators, students and police personnel that are a bit difficult to keep straight.  This book is recommended for mystery readers, especially those who read the first Maggie Richter novel.