A Painted Smile by Frances Fyfield was published in 2015 and when I saw it on the ‘new books’ shelf of a local library I thought I would give it a go, despite never having read or even heard of the author. Mind you I don’t know how I’ve missed seeing her books as she has written a lot, and has several different series on the go. This one is from her Diana Porteous series.

I have to say that although I slogged to the end of the book I can’t say that I enjoyed it, although it is well written. It suffers from having absolutely no likeable characters, as far as I’m concerned anyway, and the plot was thin and uninteresting.

The setting is the art world, Diana Porteous is a young widow who has inherited a lot of art works from her elderly wealthy husband, as well as his property. His daughter is incensed at this because she feels that Diana has stolen her inheritance. Diana has had a history of thieving, in fact she got to know her husband because she was stealing from him. There are lots of thieves in the book, but somehow it all adds up to a pretty boring read. I’d be interested to hear if anyone else has read anything by Frances Fyfield, and what they thought of them.

The blurb on the front from Literary Review says: ‘Elegant, original and subtle’

I suspect that the damning word there is subtle.