The Art of Murder
Jose Carlos Somoza
Translated from the Spanish by Nick Caistor
Little Brown, 2005
U.S. trade paper, first edition
ISBN 0-349-11883-3
480 pages; $13.95

It is a well-worn axiom that the average reader reads a mystery precisely because it does not make him think much beyond solving the puzzle, and then only if he wishes to. If he merely wants a bit of relaxation, some reassurance that the world ultimately does solve its problems and that the bad guys get their comeuppance, well, then, even the most nourishing of mysteries will usually give the reader that satisfaction. In the average mystery, no truly innocent person ever goes to jail permanently; no murder is left unavenged; justice is always done, even if it must sometimes be done by unorthodox methods.

It is a most unusual mystery that makes one think hard about questions of ethics, or that will haunt the reader weeks after she finishes reading the book (unless the haunting consists of nightmares of a serial killer’s gruesome methods). Rarely is one left to contemplate the intersection of art and commerce, the human degradation inherent in some forms of labor, and whether art can ever be more valuable than a human life. If you had a choice between saving all the art contained in the Louvre or saving the life of a single human being, which would you choose? Would your decision change if that human being volunteered to die to save the art? Would your decision change if the death itself were a form of art?

In The Art of Murder, Jose Carlos Somoza posits a new type of art he calls hyperdramatism: art in which actual human beings are the artworks. The novel opens with the description of one such work of art:

The teenage girl stands naked on the plinth. Her smooth stomach and the dark curve of her navel are at eye level. She is looking down with her head tilted to one side, one hand shielding her pubis, the other on her hip. Her knees are together and slightly bent. She is painted in natural sienna and ochre. Shading in burnt sienna emphasizes her breasts and moulds her inner thighs and her little slit. We should not say ‘slit’ because this is a work of art we are talking about, but when we see her, that is what we think. A tiny vertical slit, stripped of all hair. We walk round the plinth and observe the figure from the back. The tanned buttocks reflect patches of light. If we step away, her anatomy acquires a more innocent look. Her hair is strewn with small white flowers. More flowers surround her feet – a pool of milk. Even at this distance we can still pick up the strange scent she gives off, like the smell of wood after rain. Next to the security rope is a little stand with the title in three languages: Deflowering.

This type of art makes extraordinary demands on the “canvas.” The humans who become artworks are drugged to an extraordinary degree, so that their bodily functions are almost completely controlled: sweat, saliva, menstruation and other secretions are made to virtually disappear with certain medications, while other medications control the pain involved in holding awkward poses for six to eight hours at a time with almost no movement (even breathing and blinking slows almost to a stop due to meditation techniques). In order to achieve the effects the artist seeks, the artist must “prime” and “paint” the canvas, which work involves psychological as well as physical shaping, often to an extreme degree to obtain exactly the right expression on the model’s face.

The models are treated precisely as objects. Clara, a primed canvas, is proud of her orange-tinged yellow labels, dangling from her neck, her right wrist and her right ankle, because they mean she has been contracted by the Van Tysch Foundation, the home of the foremost hyperdramatic artist of the time. She is transported as a fragile freight item when moved from one country to the next, barely even spoken to. She takes this as a matter of course; she is material, no longer precisely human. As one of those who prepares her for the artist informs her, “Being a masterpiece has something . . . inhuman about it. … Art uses us, my child, it uses us in order to exist, but it’s like an alien being. That’s what you’ve got to think: you’re not human when you are a painting. Think of yourself as an insect. … When you discover what the insect is thinking … then you’ll be a great work of art.”

But if the artist and the canvas do their work well, a hyperdramatic artwork can become worth millions or even billions of dollars, and the artwork and the artist both can become unbelievably wealthy. Canvases live pampered, if lonely, lives in their off hours, able to buy themselves every luxury imaginable, the most beautiful clothes, the most elegant jewels. They are protected from mistreatment by their owners – sexual or otherwise – because only the artwork, not the human, is purchased, to the extent that distinction can be made. When the canvases retire – most quite young, if they have been masterpieces, for the demand is mostly for teenage canvases – they retire for good.

As one might expect, this sort of art has its critics. Protest groups object to the treatment of humans as canvases, and liken their condition to slavery (despite their huge paychecks). Most of these groups do not even know of the illegal trade in humans as objects and furniture; imagine using a human as a chair, a lamp or as ashtray. Nor do they know, save perhaps in their imaginations, of the use of humans in more bloody artistic endeavors, something akin to what we would call snuff films, but which have achieved some degree of underground and growing respectability in the world Somoza posits.

The story begins when one of Van Tysch’s masterpieces is abducted and murdered. It’s an almost impossible crime, because the security surrounding these highly valuable and well-insured artworks seems to be impregnable. But in a world where disguise has reached a level of incredible artistic verisimilitude (portraits use real humans whose faces are covered with cerublastyne, an infinitely moldable substance), it is almost impossible to be sure anyone is who she seems to be. Lothar Bosch and April Wood, employees of the Van Tysch Foundation, must determine who committed the crime. It was grisly and strange: the 14-year-old girl who had modeled Deflowering was killed with a canvas cutter after being forced to read several paragraphs of art theory onto a tape recording.

And it does not seem like it will be the only crime of its type; this looks likely to be the work of a serial murderer. This is a problem especially because Van Tysch’s greatest work ever, an exhibition based on the works of Rembrandt, is due to open very soon. Van Tysch refuses to delay the opening, and despite the very tightest of security measures, it seems impossible to ensure the safety of all the canvases. Somoza increases the tension of the chase with great skill, causing us to worry about the lives of multiple characters and ultimately bringing everything to a horrifying close that will stop your breath in disbelief.

But for me the real value of this book is that Somoza is not content merely to have us follow the investigation of the crime. He spends much of his book showing us objects and canvases and their owners, talking about art theory, and, in particular, showing us how Clara is prepared to be the perfect canvas for one of the Rembrandt pieces. One becomes queasy at the ethics of preparing this human to look sufficiently frightened in the manner the artist chooses, but Clara not only understands, she approves – and encourages those “working” her to take things even further. The idea of using human beings as chairs does not lessen with repetition, but increases. The posing of naked thirteen-year-olds as artworks never starts to feel right, even if one has become able to appreciate the art of Balthus or is comfortable viewing Magritte’s “The Rape.” Even without the murder mystery, then, this book would be fascinating for the premise of hyperdramatic art.

Long after you have survived the shock of this book’s denouement, you will still be reeling from the shock of the challenges Somoza poses to your conceptions of the relationship between humans and art. Everything from fashion modeling to photography to the price of the latest Impressionist masterpiece at auction will have a different patina in the shadow cast by The Art of Murder. This is mystery writing at its very finest.

Dying Flames
Robert Barnard
Scribner, 2005
Hardcover, first U.S. edition
ISBN 0-7432-7219-6
256 pages; $24.00

I look forward to a new Robert Barnard mystery every year. They are exquisite British miniatures, perfect examples of finely crafted English mysteries. The mysteries themselves are not unusually complex, particularly timely, or in any way sensational. They are simply solid, strongly written, excellent examples of the craft. Barnard has won the Cartier Diamond Dagger, Nero Wolfe, Anthony, Agatha and Macavity awards, and has been nominated for an Edgar eight times. This is a writer who can be counted on to produce a reliable few hours of entertainment to the dedicated mystery reader every year without fail.

Dying Flames is no exception to the Barnard rule. His protagonist, Graham Broadbent, is a well-known author who decides to attend a reunion of the boys’ school he attended. While he is in town a knock comes at his hotel room door, and an attractive nineteen-year-old woman, Christa, enters and declares that he is her father. This is news to him, though he does recall – quite vividly, in fact – having had a hurried affair with Christa’s mother, Peggy, a girl known for her exquisite acting in George Bernard Shaw’s St. Joan. (Even an all-boys school had to bring in the occasional girl for some degree of verisimilitude.) Graham is able to eliminate himself from the fatherhood sweepstakes with some swift arithmetical calculations, but his curiosity is piqued.

As luck would have it, Graham’s former sweetheart, who did in fact become pregnant at just about the time of their assignation, has discovered her long-lost son, whom she gave up for adoption. Peggy has concluded, with no evidence but timing and an apparent hope that some of Graham’s rather minimal celebrity will rub off, that Graham must be the father. She arranges a celebratory dinner at which she makes the grand announcement of Graham’s paternity to her adult son – who, to everyone’s surprise, rejects it vehemently and with a great deal of genuine anger. The children Peggy has brought up inside a couple of failed marriages are also at least a bit non-plussed; though they are pretty much used to her fabulations after many years of dramatics, the son she has raised from birth is at least a bit put-out over the fuss made over this “long-lost” fellow.

No one is particularly surprised when Peggy goes missing immediately after this disastrous dinner, especially when she leaves behind a note indicating that she’s gone off with some bloke. Apparently this isn’t an unusual event. As the days go by and no one hears from her, however, it appears that something more sinister has occurred. Graham basically takes over as surrogate father to Peggy’s younger children, surprising himself with the depth of his affection for them. But things cannot glide along forever this way, and Peggy’s disappearance must be solved. Many things could have gone wrong – as many as the people who wished Peggy ill. In the true manner of an English mystery, things gently and reasonably unravel themselves, with the clues piling up until a conclusion is inescapable.

This is at least Barnard’s 39th book, and I’ve read them all. With every new one, I fear that it’s the last, and he will decide to rest on his laurels. Here’s hoping that there will be many more to follow in the wake of Dying Flames; if all future books give as much pleasure as this one, we all have many fine hours of reading ahead of us.

The Virgin of Small Plains
Nancy Pickard
Ballantine Books, 2006
U.S. hardcover, first edition
ISBN 0-345-47099-0
352 pages; $23.95

Nancy Pickard’s Jenny Cain mysteries entertained me straight through the 1980s. She lost me, though, in 1993, with The 27-Ingredient Chili Con Carne Murders, her completion of a book left unfinished by Virginia Rich at the time of her death. Suddenly Pickard was no longer on my must-read list, even though I did add her Marie Lightfoot mysteries to my collection.

Then this year’s Edgar and Agatha nominations came out, and perched on the “Best Novel” list was The Virgin of Small Plains. And a couple of Readerville regulars whose opinion I trust raved about the book and Pickard’s departure from series characters. I decided to give it a try.

It was worth the read. The Virgin of Small Plains is fast-moving, populated with intriguing and believable characters, and depicts life in a small town that feels much like the Illinois town I grew up in, where everybody knew everybody. The story jumps between 1987, when a mystery went deliberately unsolved, to 2004, when a woman dies, a man returns to town, and terrible questions that have haunted the protagonists for 17 years begin to demand answers.

There are three protagonists: Abby Reynolds, the town doctor’s daughter, Mitch Newquist, the judge’s son, and Rex Shellenberger, the sheriff’s son. Abby and Mitch are high school sweethearts. They are not only in love, but in lust as only high school kids in the throes of first love can be, every touch the most exquisite and unbearable caress and every thought seemingly in concert. On our first visit to 1987, we find Abby and Mitch cuddling in Abby’s bed, debating whether this is the night to lose their virginity to one another. Mitch, being the good guy that he is, doesn’t have a condom on him, and he ventures down to the doctor’s office to find one. And in that short trip down the stairs begin all the problems.

The next thing Abby knows, Mitch is gone – really gone, shipped out of town and away from her attempts to snag a boy above her station – or so says his mother. Abby is shattered. Rex is shattered for another reason, for what he saw that night. And Mitch is shattered at his family’s sudden, unexplained rejection.

In 2004, Mitch returns to Small Plains to visit his mother’s grave, and suddenly everything begins to unravel. The tornado that greets him is the perfect metaphor for what happens to the town when he is spotted: everything is turned upside down, and danger is everywhere. Suddenly everyone’s story about that night in 1987 starts to come out, and the inconsistent suppositions and conclusions reached by the three young friends and their parents are exposed for the sadly wrong explanations they are. And as the mysteries of 17 years before approach solutions, people start to die.

Pickard tells her story through the eyes of many of those who populate Small Plains, using each of the three friends and several other important characters as viewpoint characters in turn. It is a difficult technique, but Pickard accomplishes it. In addition, her likable characters remain likable even when they do misguided things, and her unlikable characters all have sparks in them that make them real rather than caricatures of bad guys.

This novel kept me guessing almost to the end, but that is because of the book’s only real flaw: the ending comes out of nowhere, with the ultimate villain of the piece someone to whom no clues have pointed. But then, the point of this book does not seem to be the mystery itself. Rather, this is a character study of a small town in the Midwest, its mores, its relationships, its class barriers – and, in the world of 2004, its survival in a world that is ever more urban, where children leave the moment they graduate from high school and build lives elsewhere. This books left me yearning for a small town atmosphere in which you see and converse with someone you know every day, and no one gets so close behind you on the subway platform that you think he’s stealing your wallet. In this world, people visit the cemetery on Memorial Day because they still remember what that day means, and there’s only a single pizza parlor. It is a world that may be dying in real life; but here, in Small Plains, it thrives.