Stealing With Style by Emyl Jenkins (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, $22.95)
"I don't need to dig around in musty old trunks to learn about my clients, and I certainly don't need tarot cards. Just a glance around the room tells me everything--whether they're educated or self-made, if they've traveled or stuck close to home, if they're rich or poor. Where there's money (and there usually is in the houses I'm paid to visit), it's easy to tell if it's old money or new. The evidence is all right there. It's in the books people put out on their coffee tables, the pictures they hang on their walls, the lampshades they buy, the figurines they display in their corner cupboards. It's in their choice of the corner cupboard itself--antique or new, plain or fancy, traditional or modern. Yes, people lay their lives out in their homes, just the way Granny used to do when she hung her laundry out in her backyard for all to see.
In my profession I'm surrounded by lust, greed, envy, sometimes even malice, and usually when I'm not looking. But what do you expect when antiques bring such big bucks? Oh, those treasures from the past may exude an air of gentility and sophistication, but the truth is the antiques market is a lot like the stock market. Glamorous on the surface. Sizzling and seething just one layer down.
Think of it this way. Crime, they say, follows money. If crime can happen on Wall Street, and we know it does, then anything can happen just down the street from you in antique malls and shops and auction houses." --excerpted from the book
