"Girl in Hyacinth Blue" by Susan Vreeland

This is the story of a painting with the style and expertise of a Vermeer, but it's been kept hidden for decades. Could it actually be a Vermeer, or was it just painted to look like one? Each chapter takes the reader farther back in time, slowly revealing the painting's origins.

At first glance this might seem like a knockoff of Girl with a Pearl Earring (the story of the creation of Vermeer's painting by that name) but it's interesting to note that the two books were published the exact same year (1999). And books like these don't just appear the way I feel James Patterson novels must, so it's not as if one of the two books might have been published in early 1999 and the other author thought, hey, I can do something like that, and hurriedly dashed off a similar novel.

In fact, Girl in Hyacinth Blue started as a short story (the first chapter) that was later followed by a related short story (the last chapter) and then filled in by two more short stories in the middle; Vreeland continued filling in the gaps with short stories until she realized what she had was a novel.

I enjoyed reading this book and found it well-written and interesting, but I must admit I preferred Girl with a Pearl Earring. (The two books are actually not that similar and are really only linked by Vermeer, but I can't help comparing them.)