Sargent's Deadly Commission
He Painted Their Portraits. Someone Painted Him a Killer.​
The year is 1897. The place: the glittering Brussels World’s Fair—where ambition, empire, and reputation are displayed like priceless art… and just as easily shattered.
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Amateur sleuth Jade and her best friend Ivey time travel to the fair to investigate a puzzling clue: a mysterious unfinished painting connected to John Singer Sargent. They expect answers about art history. Instead, they confirm their worst fear—that some masterpieces survive because the truth behind them was carefully buried.
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Sargent is staying with the powerful Braxton family while completing a prestigious portrait commission. Within hours of Jade’s arrival, a member of that very household is murdered—and Sargent becomes the prime suspect. Worse still, he refuses to provide an alibi.
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Jade is certain he’s innocent. But innocence is difficult to prove when secrets stretch from a London townhouse to the shadowy politics behind the World’s Fair—and to the unsettling Professor Heinrich Schmidt, whose interest in the case feels far too personal.
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To clear Sargent’s name, Jade must navigate high society, hidden motives, and the danger of asking the wrong questions in the wrong century—before the truth is buried along with the victim.
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Perfect for book lovers and mystery fans, Sargent’s Deadly Commission blends time travel, art history, and a satisfying classic whodunit. This atmospheric historical mystery invites readers to solve the puzzle beside a determined amateur sleuth—if they dare to uncover what history was never meant to reveal.
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There's so much to explore at the Brussels World's Fair with Jade and Ivey, including a mysterious scandal! Order your copy today on Amazon.
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Paintings In the Book
Clockwise from left: Lady Agnew of Lochnaw (the inspiration for the portrait of Lady Braxton), El Jaleo, The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, Venice, photo of Sargent in his studio, and Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose.
The Artist Who Inspired the Book
One of my personal favorite artists, John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) was a celebrated portrait painter in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, renowned for his dazzling technique and psychological insight.
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Sargent trained formally at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris under Carolus-Duran, and by his twenties, he had begun attracting elite clients eager for portraits that conveyed both status and vitality. This type of portrait inspired my story in Sargent's Deadly Commission.
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Eventually, Sargent became the portraitist of choice for high society. Although he grew weary of formal portrait commissions later in life, Sargent found renewed freedom in watercolor landscapes and informal studies, particularly during travels to Venice and the Middle East.
Today, he is remembered as a master technician whose bravura brushwork, luminous color, and penetrating observation captured the grandeur of the Gilded Age.
