DIRTY PICTURES

Dirty Pictures is narrated by a woman with a brash, irreverent point of view. Martel's voice is caustic, satirical, and darkly humorous. It gets into the readers head and stays there.

After her mother's death, New York art dealer Elizabeth Martel is seriously short of funds, and a friend suggests she take a job as art adviser to billionaire Preston Greylander. When Greylander is killed in a mysterious murder-suicide, Martel is left in possession of a Rembrandt that needs restoration. She takes the painting to Amsterdam where she deposits it with the prestigious firm of Van der Saar Fine Arts. As Hendrik Van der Saar and Martel enthusiastically resume an old love affair, and she discovers that the family is haunted by guilt and swathed in deception.

Patricia Ketola borrows freely from the genres of the crime novel, the family saga and the love story and combines them into a unique vision of life in a world heading for disaster. This richly textured novel celebrates the profound, the beautiful, and the good, and there is a lot of deep knowledge backing up Martel's often outrageous statements.

Patricia Ketola was born in North Dakota and brought up in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She studied cultural anthropology and art history. An adventurous sort, she traveled the world and experienced many different cultures and personalities. Landing in New York City, Patricia became a middle manager in a financial services operation. On the side, she moonlighted in an art gallery and became involved in the fine arts and antiquities trade. Later, she moved to the mountains of Colorado and worked on a mushroom farm. Dirty Pictures is Patricia Ketola's first novel. She currently lives in Minneapolis and works on her second novel, Surfers.