No big money endeavor is safe from the criminal mastermind. Jeffrey Archer, a fiction mastermind in his own right, taps into the trade of major art masterpieces (mixed in with the events of 9/11) for a tension-filled challenge against a criminally conniving banker whose modus operandi is to deplete the wealth of a vulnerable client and, in the bargain, acquire great art for his private collection.

Crackling with credibility, Archer demonstrates an extensive knowledge of a region of commerce in which the possessive passion of the collector is the driving force. He's got it all covered: the bartering, the practices of the great auction houses, the role of art experts, as well as Japanese custom and how to compose the deucedly clever stratagem.

The dramatis personnae divide into two camps, the good and the extremely bad. Heading up the latter division is a villain arch enough to qualify for the top ten of the genre, Bryce Fenston, aka, Nicu Munteanu of Budapest. This is a parasytic banker whose loan to your estate would be your worst nightmare. Predator is almost too kind a word. And, matching him stroke-for-stroke in sociopathic disregard for law is his in-house lawyer and dirty-work flunkie, Karl Leapman, a Teutonic slave to his boss's every wish. The man (Fenston) did, after all, give Karl a job after his release from jail. "There was no sewer he wasn't willing to swim in for his master," as Archer puts it.

Could there be worse floating in this circle of disreputable sewage? Believe it. Also in Fenston's employ is Olga Krantz, who retired from Russian gymnastics on the Olympic level to become the bancruptcy artist's professional killer. And, she has a predilection for the knife and the neck. There's no euphemism for this bunch, so let me get the to the good guys, the victims.

On the day before 9/11, Lady Victoria Wentworth, a woman of fabulous possessions who needed a 30 million dollar loan and unwittingly came to Fenston Finance in Manhattan for it, is facing the possibility of losing her English estate known as Wentworth Hall. If the mansion were a boat it would sink under the weight of all the art pieces covering its walls. Top prize is Van Gogh's "Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear" which could bring $60-70 million at auction, if not more. Enough, in any case, to bail her out. But that's not going to happen if Fenston has anything to do with it. He doesn't only want the painting -- he wants it all.

After reading a report written by Fenston's art historian Dr. Anna Petrescu recommending that her debt can be paid off by selling the Van Gogh to a buyer of considerable means who Anna knows would want it, a young slim woman appears and slices open Victoria's throat and lobs off her ear. Hitperson Krantz has earned another fee of a million dollars and, in a sign of feilty, retrieves Anna's report for Fenston's attention.

Anna, having had enough of her boss's vanity and contempt for legal restraint, is ready for a showdown with him, resignation in mind. Despite Anna's prepared points about the obligation to advise a client of her options, Fenston interprets Anna's report as disloyalty bordering on company treason. Before she can quit, Fenston fires her and orders her from the premises on the 83rd floor. Fenston and Leapmen take the elevator down to meet a client and, mere moments later, as Anna waits for the elevator with her office possessions in hand, American Airlines Flight 11 out of Boston crashes into the 94th floor.

What follows is Anna's harrowing escape down the stairway and out onto the streets barely before the building's collapse. But, even blocks away, the fog of smoke overtakes and engulfs her, nearly choking her to death, survival due only to her superior athletic conditioning and endurance.

When Arabella Wentworth, Victoria's sister takes over the estate, Anna continues her work to save Wentworth, Van Gogh, and foil her ex-boss at every turn. But she's placed her life in mortal danger, and she's being stalked by more than one pursuer: the deadly Krantz and an FBI chap named Jack Delaney. Once exposed, Delaney provides an offensive partnership and romantic interest for the gorgeous art expert whose fierce determination to do right by a client puts her in mortal danger despite her ingenious false impressions.

Archer, after a seven year absence from the mystery scene while serving a prison sentence for perjury and writing prison memoires seems unwilling to exclude a lot of elements that he's probably been itching to write about. The tie-in to 9/11, while giving him an historical time frame and section headings by reference date, is revealing but unessential -- a subplot with electrifying tension that's quickly dissipates into the main story line. It is, as they say in the skin trade, gratuitous, however horrific and masterfully created from the known events.

The best aspect of Archer's return to the bins is the clever stratagem he creates for how Anna uses her expertise to contend with an evil power. There's both a cleverness to it, and a level of predictability (I figured out the essence of it on page 239). But carping aside, this is an exciting read with an engaging heroine and an unnerving, multi-pursuer chase scheme.