Thief of Light - Softcover

Adrian Sellars is a corrupt Manhattan art dealer who makes his living selling forgeries to a wealthy Japanese businessmen. That is, until the gifted artist he employs is viciously murdered in his SoHo studio and the just-finished painting Adrian commissioned, a Monet water lilies fake, is destroyed. When Adrian's Japanese clients insist on getting another painting, and punctuate their resolve by murdering his business partner, Adrian takes to the Manhattan streets in a frantic race to save his life.

With the help of Devon Berenson, his compassionate and intelligent colleague, Adrian wages a battle against a personal demon -- his addiction to heroin -- and combs the underside of the art world to find a way out. Amid the terrors of withdrawal Adrian and Devon find themselves falling in love, but the cold hand of the Japanese mob turns up around every corner.

From a multimillion-dollar brownstone on the Upper East Side to a auction of priceless objects on the floor of Christie's to a menacing midtown back alley, Thief of Light combines a complex and thrilling plot with one of the fastest and most heart-pounding conclusions in recent fiction.

Who is David Ramus and how did he sell this, his first novel (his first published writing of any kind), for $1 million? Ramus was a high-stakes art dealer during the volatile 1980s when art became as hip a commodity as junk bonds and narcotics. When the whole inflated scene self-destructed, Ramus was left in dire straits: his debts were enormous; he was the subject of a federal investigation; and he was addicted to heroin. These alarming experiences lie at the heart of his slick and readable tale of corruption, revenge, and redemption in the New York art world. Adrian Sellars is a brash young dealer with a lucrative scam, selling perfect forgeries of paintings by such masters as Monet. He earns enough money to run a seemingly legitimate and lavishly appointed gallery and to support his drug habit. Life is good until his forger is brutally murdered the night before he's scheduled to deliver a very important painting to Adrian for sale to a demanding Japanese businessman. The action takes off along typical thriller lines. There's a love interest and plenty of scheming, double-crossing, dumb luck, close calls, and gratuitous violence. True, Ramus does turn some nice phrases when he writes about painting, but aside from a touch of class and a likable enough hero, this is pretty standard fare. The publisher, however, believes otherwise and has planned a hefty first printing and an all-out publicity push, so there will be a demand. Donna Seaman