A 12-year-old boy becomes aware that he is sitting in a room filled with paintings and sculptures at the National Gallery of Art in Washington. He can’t remember who he is, how he got there or why he knows so much about fine art—nor will the reader—until the climax of the novel “The Van Gogh Deception” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 306 pages, $16.99), a mash-up of high culture, high tech, mystery and action.

In accordance with thriller-genre requirements, author Deron Hicks tells us a few things right up front. We know that...