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This page lists novels featuring the art security expert Joanna Stark.

The Cavalier in White

Marcia Muller

1986

A Joanna Stark novel.

"Joanna Stark thought she had finally left her troubled past behind: After the death of her husband, she quit the San Francisco art security firm where she was a partner and retreated to the small California wine country town of Sonoma. But unexpectedly, in one rainy week before Thanksgiving, her carefully constructed world collapses. A Frans Hals painting, The Cavalier in White, is stolen from the M.H. de Young Museum, and the strange circumstances surrounding its disappearance prompt her former business partner to ask her to return to the city and investigate the theft. Joanna knows she must go back—as much for her own protection as for the sake of the museum. Her investigation takes her from the hushed corridors of the de Young to a seedy waterfront tavern; from a Seacliff mansion to a vandalized shack on the shores of the Bay; to galleries, museum openings—and the scene of a murder. By the time she confronts the killer, the careful order of her life is nearly destroyed and she finds that the past is not only inescapable, but also more complex and frightening than she had previously imagined."

There Hangs the Knife

Marcia Muller

1988

A Joanna Stark novel.

"Joanna Stark can’t seem to forgive and forget: what happened twenty years ago still plagues her. She knows the only way it can be resolved is if she gets her revenge. So she devises an intricately-plotted plan to entrap and expose Anthony Parducci, an art thief who also happens to be her worst enemy and a man who once, a long time ago, she truly cared about. Knowing that two paintings from Pieter Bruegel’s Proverb Series have already been stolen, and most certainly by Parducci, she has a friend order and then show a "copy" of a Bruegel in his London gallery in order to lure Parducci in. When the painting is stolen, Joanna is thrilled that her plan has been set in motion. But she soon realizes that someone double-crossed her and took the Bruegel before Parducci could get to it. Now both Parducci and Joanna are out to get the painting."

Dark Star

Marcia Muller

1989

A Joanna Stark novel.

"Things seem to be going smoothly for Joanna Stark; she is beginning to get over the fear that has haunted her since her near-fatal encounter (in There Hangs the Knife) with Antony Parducci, former lover, art forger, thief. But arriving home after lunch at her son's winery-to-be in their town of Sonoma, Joanna finds her house broken into and a painting—one of no value but of great significance to Joanna—has been stolen. The painting has been taken, and other subtle clues left, she knows, on purpose in order to frighten her. She is convinced that Parducci, whom she had left for dead in England, has been there, has come to kill her. Joanna is alone with her fear. Her stepson, E.J., convinced the man is certainly dead, will urge her to put him out of her mind; it's unhealthy, he's told her, to dwell on past fears. Moved to confide in a woman friend, Joanna is drawn into another mystery—the provenance and ownership of two very valuable paintings that no one had known about. Oddly, mysteries and anomalies begin to match, one with the other; and, like a giant spider, Parducci seems to be at the center of it all."