Rembrandt's Ghost

The author of this book seems to think that for any written work of fantasy you need: stunning people, as many pop-culture references as possible, descriptions of as many exotic locations as you can find on wikipedia and most of all every stereotype in existence. Your readers will then fill in the important blanks and buy your next novel.

Paul Christopher gets as many details right as he gets them wrong. His research into Dutch culture is as accurate as his strange misspellings of words anyone using Google translate can figure out. Perhaps this is the very first novel completely spun from Wikipedia?

Besides the sloppiness of all the local cultural and physical details, the author didn't seem to have re-read his own story. At one point a show more crusty old curator and painting restorer uses the word Giggle to mention Google. A good approximation and it paints a nice picture of someone out of touch with reality. Basically a nice stereo type. Then a few sentences later this same character seems to be very familiar with the work of Quentin Tarantino. It's these strange hiccups all along the reader's path that makes this book so infuriating.

In the end everything plays out as you would have expected. After all the weird coincidences that seem to make this plot possible, the ending is as predictable as your basic chick lit mixed with some Indiana Jones themes.

Oh by the way, Rembrandt's ghost has absolutely nothing to do with the plot. show less

Seemed like this book tried to cover so much ground without ever delving deeply enough into anything. Lots of potential, it just never did it for me.