Shapiro, B.A., (The Art Forger [hc, Algonquin Books, 2012] 978-1616201326 [pb, Algonquin Books, 2013] 978-1616203160 [Nearly all of Shapiro’s major novels are structured fundamentally as mysteries or thrillers, relying on double-narrative timelines (historical and modern) to uncover a past crime or secret. Her breakout novel (Art Forger) is a literary thriller directly structured around a real-life crime—the infamous 1990 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist in Boston. It deals heavily with the criminal underbelly of the art world, illegal contracts, and forgery. There is no Jewish component in this book nor in Metropolis (hc, Algonquin, 2022). 978-1616209582. The following two of her books showcase how Shapiro blends historical fiction with the mystery genre. In both, she swaps traditional pulp mobsters for white-collar, historical, and systemic wrongdoing, framing the Nazi plundering of Jewish life, identity, and property as the ultimate “crime.” In both The Muralist and The Lost Masterpiece, Nazi art plundering (the looting of Jewish collectors) is used as a foundational plot device. The crime is not just the theft of canvas, but the literal erasing of Jewish presence, requiring modern descendants to act as detectives to reclaim their history.
United States · Fiction author
B.A. Shapiro
B.A. (Barbara Ann) Shapiro (born 1952 in Hartford, CT and now divides her time between Boston and Naples, FL) [With a background in sociology (Ph.D. from Tufts University) and experience in research and academia, B.A. Shapiro pivoted to writing suspenseful historical “art thrillers”. Following early work under her full name, she gained significant recognition in 2012 with The Art Forger, establishing a career characterized by heavily researched novels centering on art theft and history. She writes explicitly within the mystery, thriller, and psychological suspense genres, and frequently uses Jewish identity, historical trauma, and specific narrative motifs involving crime or wrongdoing to drive her fiction. She holds a Ph.D. in sociology with a specialization in deviant behavior, which heavily informs her approach to crime and human motivation. Rather than focusing on traditional “mobster” tropes or pulp crime, Shapiro’s integration of Jewish themes and crime centers on art theft, forgery, and the systemic, state-sanctioned crimes of the Holocaust.
Shapiro, B.A., (The Muralist [hc, Algonquin Books, 2015]) 978-1616203573 [pb. Algonquin Books, 2016] 978-1616206437 [The story follows Alizée Benoit, a young Jewish-American painter working for the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in New York City in 1940. While rubbing shoulders with future abstract expressionist legends like Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock, Alizée is privately living a nightmare. Her Jewish relatives are trapped in Nazi-occupied Europe. She frantically utilizes every possible legal avenue to secure them American visas. Suddenly, Alizée vanishes without a trace. Seventy years later, her great-niece, Danielle Abrams, an appraisal expert at an auction house, discovers hidden canvases behind a collection of Rothko paintings. Danielle realizes these hidden murals might be Alizée’s lost work, triggering a modern-day detective quest to solve the mystery of Alizée’s sudden 1940 disappearance and discover what happened to her European family. Shapiro shifts the villain archetype away from individual criminals to the U.S. State Department. The narrative highlights how real-life historical figures, specifically Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long, actively manipulated bureaucratic rules to block Jewish refugees from entering America. The book frames this anti-refugee stance as a bureaucratic crime against humanity. Driven to the edge by American institutional apathy, Alizée is forced into criminal subversion. She begins falsifying documents, forging affidavits, and seeking illegal backchannels to smuggle her family out of Europe. This flips the script on traditional crime fiction: the Jewish protagonist must break the law to survive state-sanctioned murder. The historical timeline is anchored by a classic mystery convention. Alizée’s abrupt disappearance functions as a Cold Case investigation that Danielle must systematically solve using historical records, art provenance, and old family artifacts.
Shapiro, B.A., (The Lost Masterpiece [hc, Algonquin Books, 2025] 978-1643756370 [pb, Algonquin Books, 2016] 978-1616206437 [This multigenerational art thriller centers on a fictional, newly discovered Édouard Manet painting titled Party on the Seine. The narrative weaves across 150 years through four generations of women, beginning in 19th-century Paris with Berthe Morisot—the real-life, often- sidelined female Impressionist painter who, in the novel’s alternate history, has a passionate affair with Manet. In the modern-day timeline, her great-great-great-great-granddaughter, Tamara Rubin, receives stunning news from an organization dedicated to returning Nazi-looted art to Jewish families. They identify Tamara as the sole legitimate heir to Party on the Seine, a priceless masterpiece confiscated from her Jewish ancestors by the Nazis during World War II. However, the moment Tamara takes possession of the painting, her life plunges into chaos. She is slapped with a massive lawsuit by the elite, non-Jewish Manet Foundation, which claims they are the rightful owners. To protect her inheritance, Tamara must turn into an investigator to track how the painting survived Nazi hands, fires, and decades of black-market dealing.
The foundational crime fueling the entire plot is Nazi art theft. The book utilizes the real-world history of the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (the Nazi task force that systematically plundered Jewish art collections). The narrative treats the painting not merely as high-value currency, but as a stolen artifact of a stolen lineage. The primary tension manifests as a legal battle royale between the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (backing Tamara) and the wealthy European art elite. Shapiro uses this to explore the real-world moral crimes of modern art foundations and museums that obfuscate provenance records to keep looted Jewish properties. Tamara’s role is that of a forensic art detective. To win her case, she has to reconstruct a broken paper trail across a century of historical trauma, uncovering how her family was defrauded, how the painting was laundered through the post-war black market, and who exactly is trying to keep the crime covered up today. – Google/AI]