Okay, if you’ve looked at the cover, you might guess even before you open the first page that this novel, which starts with a glimpse at the life of down-on-her-luck auction house assistant Judith Rashleigh, is not going to be the usual story of a slightly unlucky but plucky girl-about-town. Indeed, even before she gets fired from her job (by a supervisor who suspects that her knowledge of art is going to eventually uncover his own shady activities), Judith begins to reveal that she is not your typical flawed-but-likable heroine.

Judith’s artistic idol is the Renaissance painter Artemisia Gentileschi, whose evocative and often violent paintings serve her as both inspiration for her own life and impetus to build her professional career (and rapidly mounting wealth) no matter the cost.

"MAESTRA is a sexy, seductive read, one that will keep readers’ attention riveted as they wait for the other Louboutin to drop."

From the moment she recognizes that a painting her auction house is determined to represent is almost certainly a fake, Judith sets off a series of events that ultimately reveal her to be a psychopath, intent on personal gain and largely (although not entirely) immune to the feelings of others. She is driven, successful and beautiful --- and if it weren’t for her easy readiness to commit murder, she might be a halfway decent role model for ambitious young women.

Beauty is at the center of Judith’s ambition and success, but she readily trades on her good looks, from the time she spends as an escort named Lauren at a champagne club in London to her weeks-long stint on a tech billionaire’s yacht in the Mediterranean. And she knows it, too --- she spends no insignificant time, energy or expense on maintaining her allure, given that it’s a key part of her stock-in-trade.

Reading about Judith/Lauren’s Machiavellian machinations through the worlds of art and high finance is almost addictive, as the reader wonders if Judith will actually pull off these stunts, if she will tire of the pressure she’s under, and if she can even be trusted as a narrator. If Judith has a potentially fatal flaw, it’s probably her weakness for sex with strangers, especially high-end sex parties at which she can indulge her desire for anonymous sex in glamorous settings. One wonders if this penchant will come back to bite her (pun entirely intended) in the subsequent installments of this projected trilogy.

This is a far from perfect novel. The narrative at times seems too episodic, the designer clothes and shoes name-dropped to excess, the settings selected as if they were a travelogue of the glamorous highlights of Europe rather than to serve the plot. Even the scintillating prologue fails to deliver on its promise when the text appears virtually word-for-word about two-thirds of the way through the book. That said, MAESTRA is a sexy, seductive read, one that will keep readers’ attention riveted as they wait for the other Louboutin to drop.