Dupes

Meet Charles Buchanan. Small time art dealer. Philanderer. Art forger. A man whose success depends on the wall of secrecy that surrounds his work. A wall that is about to come crashing down. On the brink of pulling off the biggest and most profitable hoax of his life, the rediscovery of two Egon Schiele paintings hidden from the Nazis by their previous owner, Buchanan makes a terrible mistake. Unable to resist indulging in a new sexual conquest to celebrate, he embarks on a meaningless few hours of passion that have disastrous consequences when they are witnessed. Within days Buchanan's studio has been broken into, his car vandalized, and what appear to be his greatest assets have become his biggest liabilities. His brilliantly conceived and executed plan, a plan that reaches back more than half a century and involves events in France, Germany and England, begins to come unraveled as two of the women he has treated so cavalierly form an uneasy alliance. Buchanan's story is based on events from real life and has been kept under wraps for almost twenty years to protect the people it depicts. The ideas about "value" in the world it exposes will appeal to anyone who has ever wondered why it is that the importance of a statement seems to depend far more on who says it, than on what is said. Or why it is that a given work of art is worthy of reverence - and therefore incredibly valuable - if it is believed to be painted by a master, but if it is revealed to be a forgery, then its monetary value is destroyed. Where in a painting, print or drawing does the real "value" reside?