I try not to read reviews for a book I write about on this blog until after I'm done with the book, but I accidentally saw something that Parade wrote about B.A. Shapiro's The Art Forger . The magazine called it a "literary thriller." Thriller? Yes. But literary? No. Sure, it makes for a servicable caper - a young painter shunned by the art world who is offered the chance to copy a Degas that had been stolen in the 1990 Boston art heist (the heist is fact; the Degas fiction). But any book that uses the word "laboriously" is not literary. I tripped up on the writing. It's just not good. The novel is told in present tense. Adverbs are ripe. Shaprio over describes everything, which is tedious to the point of maddening when describing how to forge a painting. I was very tempted to pick up my red pen and start slashing, but it just wasn't worth it after a while because I'd slash everywhere. The writing didn't pass my meter test: I would n