All the requisite pieces of a high stakes art world thriller are here: protagonist who's an ambitious junior specialist at an upmarket London art auction house; Russian billionaire oligarch who owns an important and priceless art collection, including a rare, "missing" Malevich that no one has seen for decades; the oligarch's wife who falls for the junior specialist; and pretty competent writing. But none of this ever coalesces into a real story, and for a good two thirds of the book the three main characters kind of meander around, fall in and out of bed together, and analyze/philosophize about the meaning of life and art, especially Malevich's. I kept waiting for a heist, or a forgery, or anything to happen but, alas, I waited in vain.