Lead White
Description
Art dealer Hugh Rhattigan is heavily in debt to Douglas Virgo, a freelance fixer for some of the most powerful banks and corporations in London. With little hope of repaying the debt, Hugh is coerced into establishing a gallery as a front for illicit payments. Blue-chip banks and corporations can't easily show bumper staff bonuses in the accounts any more, let alone bribes to politicians to stave off regulation, or payments for Bolivian coke-flake and all manner of other nocturnal pursuits, so why not book these outgoings as a piece of art? All they need is a gallery to provide the paperwork and an artist to manufacture the work.
But the gallery is soon dragged into a turf war between rival criminal gangs, while a host of ever-richer, ever-greedier collectors set about making a killing of their own.
Like a Breaking Bad in the art world, Lead White is gripping, irreverent and very, very funny.
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Content
- Intro
- Title Page
- Contents
- Author's Note
- Prologue
- Part 1
- 1: Gild it and They Will Come
- 2: Emergency Exit Only
- 3: Nearer, My God, to Thee
- 4: Good Lord, the Attitude
- 5: The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show
- 6: The Girlfriend Experience
- 7: Two Hundred Windows and Not One of Them Opens
- 8: Crunching Numbers, Not Bones
- 9: The Sherbet Dip
- 10: Vanishing Point
- 11: The Artful Dodger
- 12: From the French Word Mort
- 13: Don't Grow Cabbages Then, Uncle
- Part 2
- 14: The Monkey and the Organ-Grinder
- 15: The Fox and the Glove-Puppet
- 16: Maybach? Bacharach? Auerbach!
- 17: Figure Painting
- 18: Closed Circuit
- 19: Cicatrise
- 20: All Hail the Anti-Hirst
- 21: Tearing the Envelope
- 22: Pure Bunce
- 23: Amuse Bouche
- 24: Kosher
- 25: Coming into Heat
- 26: Reduced to Clear
- 27: Business Boom
- 28: The Revolution Will Be Streamed
- 29: Spasibo
- 30: Poets Don't Buy Art
- 31: A Vodka Tonic and a Babycham
- 32: Serpentine
- 33: A Devious Upgrade
- 34: The Clicking Stops
- 35: Crouch, Touch, Pause, Engage
- 36: The Credit Crunch
- 37: The Care of the Faithful
- 38: A Richer, Greedier Fool
- 39: (Just) A Flicker of Remorse
- 40: The Cutting Edge
- 41: Go, Get the Butter
- 42: Not All Scars Fade
- 43: Haiti, Not Hades
- 44: An Arm and a Leg
- 45: If the Shoe Fits
- About the Author
- Copyright
