The Biltmore’s Mona Lisa is a World War II heist novel built around a terrific what-if: what if the Mona Lisa, moved to America for safekeeping, ended up hidden at the Biltmore Estate in North Carolina? The setup is part art-history puzzle, part wartime thriller, with the book opening under the warning, “Thou shalt not covet…” and then spending the rest of the story showing how many people fail that test.

Author Daniel D. Smith, Sr. gives the novel a roomy, procedural feel. We spend time with curators, soldiers, German operatives, Biltmore staff, politicians, and art dealers, so the heist feels less like a single caper and more like a web of errands, loyalties, favors, and bad choices. Captain Declan Donahue, with his damaged body, practical mind, and Chinese puzzle box, is one of the book’s most grounded figures. Rolf Gunther, meanwhile, gives the German plotline a steady engine as he’s tasked with the blunt mission: “I plan to steal the real Mona Lisa from an estate near Asheville.”

What the book does best is turn logistics into drama. Moving paintings, choosing rooms, guarding stairways, swapping uniforms, rowing through fog, hiding in blind spots, and protecting a crate all become suspense beats. The Biltmore setting helps a lot because the house feels like a character: grand, complicated, full of corridors, service spaces, rooms, and secrets. The heist depends as much on architecture and routine as it does on bravery.

The novel also has a fun fascination with copies, authenticity, and who gets to decide what’s real. The ending’s explanation of the different Mona Lisas gives the story a satisfying puzzle-box quality, tying together the German operation, Buchard’s choices, Daniel Roberts’s private scheme, and Senator Wellington’s greed. That final sorting-out is one of the book’s pleasures because it makes the whole story feel like an art-world shell game with wartime stakes.

The Biltmore’s Mona Lisa is a patient and detail-rich historical heist novel with an old-fashioned adventure rhythm. It’s at its best when it’s following people doing specific work under pressure: guarding, forging, planning, carrying, deceiving, and improvising. The result is a book about obsession dressed up as a caper, where the Mona Lisa is both a painting and a temptation that reveals what everyone around her wants most.