The Value of Doubt

What is something worth when nobody can agree what it really is?Veronica "Ronnie" Fairfax makes her living in the rarefied world of cultural property, where museums, collectors, estates, auction houses, insurers, and private buyers compete over objects whose value depends as much on provenance and belief as on beauty.Ronnie is very good at her job.She is also very good at recognizing when uncertainty can be turned into opportunity.In The Long Possession, questions of ownership, history, and entitlement become increasingly difficult to separate when a cultural asset carries more than one plausible claim to legitimacy.In The Second Original, a neglected museum painting, a tantalizing gap in provenance, and the possibility of a lost masterwork draw Ronnie into a transaction where authentication may be less important than what people are willing to believe.Told in Ronnie's sharp, observant first-person voice, The Value of Doubt contains two sophisticated art-world crime stories about ownership, authenticity, reputation, institutional self-interest, and the profitable distance between truth and certainty.Because in Ronnie Fairfax's world, the most valuable thing in the room is not always the object.Sometimes it is the doubt.