The Forgery of Venus - Michael Gruber

I really enjoyed Gruber's The Book of Air and Shadows and looked forward to reading this book about a forged Velasquez painting.  The scope of the book is much smaller than the previous one, which loses you several of the really interesting characters Gruber can come up with - in fact it telescopes the story down to a first person narrative of someone who is at least somewhat crazy, and maybe significantly more than that.  Gruber is up to the challenge and the story never lagged, but that was more a tribute to his writing than the story.  I did like the book, but probably not as much as Air and Shadows.