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Beverle Graves Myers transports readers to eighteenth-century Italy in her third Baroque mystery, which revolves around the deadly intrigue surrounding the election of a new pope. CRUEL MUSIC (Poisoned Pen, $22.95) follows Painted Veil and Interrupted Aria and features castrato Tito Amato whose peripatetic musical career has taken the Venetian singer throughout Europe. In his latest outing, Amato's longed-for return to his beloved Venice and “long mornings in my dressing gown, sipping chocolate and catching up on the gazettes” is doomed when the family home that Tito shares with his merchant seaman brother, Alessandro, his sister, and her English artist husband is rudely invaded by the Venice constabulary in the service of Senator Montorio, the state inquisitor.
Tito is arrested, and thus he is thrust into his newest adventure. He has committed no crime; rather Montorio has plans for him—and the means to ensure his cooperation.
The papacy is in a state of transition with ailing Pope Clement apparently on his deathbed and various factions already maneuvering to have their favorite elected to replace him. Montorio is intent that his brother, Cardinal Stefano, should be the next pope.
Since Lorenzo Fabiani, the Cardinal Padrone, who could decide the matter by supporting one faction or another, is a great music lover, Montorio has decided to make him “a present of Venice's finest singer,” Tito Amato. Montorio expects Tito to act as a spy within Fabiani's household. Tito refuses, but Montorio, a skilled and ruthless plotter, produces a captive and battered Alessandro, and that gives Tito no choice but to accept the assignment in order to rescue his brother.
The murder of a young woman servant in Fabiani's household results in further complications when Tito realizes that he has been deliberately implicated. His is not an easy task, and he finds some unexpected help in the form of a lovely woman. (Readers who equate castrati with sexlessness will be surprised).
Myers sets the stage beautifully, and her Tito Amato is an endearingly sympathetic character whose company should be enjoyed for many more performances. A brief author's note at the end of the book enhances the excellent historical background of Tito's series.
Larry Karp fashions an entertaining mystery around the clouded flowering of ragtime music and the genius of Scott Joplin in Sedalia, Missouri, in the 1890s. As a Missourian by birth, I think of Sedalia as a sedate little town whose sole distinction is serving as the site of the State Fair. But Karp's THE RAGTIME KID (Poisoned Pen, $24.95) transports readers to a Sedalia bursting with music and ambitions.
Hearing Scott Joplin's “Maple Leaf Rag” for the first time and learning that Joplin lives in Sedalia plants the seed that leads a determined fifteen-year-old Brun Campbell to hop a train and run away from his home in El Reno, Oklahoma, and head for his Mecca in 1899.
Brun's piano playing skills and his go-getter attitude serve him well. He finds work in John Stark's music store and occasionally as a substitute piano player in some bars. He meets Joplin, auditions for him, and convinces him to take him on as a student (an unusual arrangement for a black man and a white boy at that time and place). He finds a home away from home with a kindly family, and becomes a key figure when unscrupulous men conspire to steal Joplin's music.
Filled with historical characters, Karp spins a credible murder mystery that serves to illuminate the genius of Scott Joplin and his struggle to control his music and have it taken as seriously as classical music. As part of the backdrop to the story, though, the pervasive racism of the time resulted in slights large and small, and Karp is unsparing in depicting its ravages.
A final chapter provides further historical underpinning for Karp's tale, and an extensive bibliography illustrates the author's determination to get it right.
Ken Kuhlken recalls the fertile ferment of the folk movement that flowed from flower power to protest and brought plenty of culture clashes in its wake in his sixth novel, THE DO-RE-MI (Poisoned Pen, $24.95). This book features Clifford Hickey, the son of Tom Hickey, the PI who was introduced in Kuhlken's award-winning first novel, The Loud Adios, in 1991.
Clifford isn't a detective, but rather a musician who in a last fling before law school heads for Evergreen—a small coastal California town among the redwoods, where a folk jamboree is to take place in the summer of 1972.
Clifford's brother, Alvaro, a Vietnam vet who's had some troubles since his return, is already living in the area and has ties to Phil Ochs, one of the jamboree headliners. Clifford has barely managed to find Alvaro's remote campsite and greet his brother when a delegation of sheriff's deputies arrive. Alvaro grabs a rifle and flees into the woods. The deputies grab Clifford and, to his amazement, charge him with conspiracy to commit murder.
Filled with hippies, bikers, protesters, drop-outs, and mystics, Kuhlken's story brings back the time when the peaceful folk scene of the sixties morphed into something altogether more strident and divisive, reflecting the same divisions that were gripping the country. Clifford is caught in some of the fallout as Evergreen's townspeople, biker gangs, and hippie communes clash violently.
Music, marijuana, and murder provide Clifford with more than he ever bargained for, but it's an entertaining farrago for the reader.
Copyright (c) 2006 Robert C. Hahn
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Internationally bestselling author Henning Mankell adds to his series of Kurt Wallander mysteries with a fourth installment, THE MAN WHO SMILED (The New Press, $24.95), translated from Swedish by Laurie Thompson.
The story opens with Wallander on extended sick leave from the Ystad police force of Sweden, severely disquieted by having killed a man more than a year before. Wallander is on the brink of abandoning police work altogether when lawyer-friend Sten Torstensson begs his attention to his father's recent, and suspicious, death. At first glance, the death appears to be an ordinary car accident—an old man dead along a fog-blanketed road—but when Sten himself turns up dead two weeks later, expertly shot three times in the head and chest, Wallander returns to work and demands the case.
He's paired with Ann-Britt Hagland, Ystad's first female detective, who proves unexpectedly adroit for a rookie. The case is slow starting until a garden-planted land mine and a car bomb set them off on a lead in the investigation; for both the murder and the bombings, Wallander fingers the elusive business mogul who had become Tortensson's father's sole client for the past few years.
Mankell's easy writing style well accommodates the novel's sometimes-formidable plot; at times, the narrative gets mired in its rigorous descriptions of Wallander's deductive process, which may send even the keenest mystery reader's mind into a tailspin. but at the novel's finish, we are privileged to witness extraordinary insight, and the circumspect Detective Wallander is a character through which Mankell can realize canonical ambitions.—Nicole K. Sia.
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THE LIMNER'S MASTERPIECE by JANICE LAW
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Ron Chironna
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It was a damp day in late winter, fog hanging over river and wood, manure piles steaming, rain considering but holding off, and, even so, damp everywhere sinking into your bones. That kind of day. Still, the air was mild enough to make young men think of spring, and cows look out for new grass.
Anson Bigelow was in the back room of the smallest house in Attawaugan, preparing to hit the road for a summer traveling in the face painting trade. He was finishing up his stretchers and priming canvases with big dollops of white lead. Anson used only the best pigments from Boston on good Belgium linen, for he aimed at permanence, permanence and preservation being the whole point of a portrait. As for the likeness, he let his customers judge, and they were rarely disappointed.
That spring day, as Anson thought about the season to come, his spaniel, Daisy, bounded into the room, leaping and dancing to announce a stranger. When he looked out the window, Anson was surprised, and a little excited, to see Prince, Jeremiah Minton's big African butler, sitting like the King of the Wor
ld on a white-faced plow horse. The painter hurried out, carrying his brush to indicate a serious busyness, though whatever he had in hand would mean less than nothing to Prince, whose manner was only a shade less grand than his master's.
"You're to come right away, Mr. Bigelow,” Prince said, not even getting down, friendlylike. Then, remembering Anson's affliction, he beckoned for the painter to come to him.
"What's happened?” The painter's little-used voice was hoarse and loud. Prince closed up his face like a preacher before a hellfire sermon.
"Not to intrude on the family's sorrow,” Anson said, “but I'll need to prepare my mind for the work. And bring the right sized canvas."
Prince twisted his mouth half open before realizing the futility: Anson Bigelow was stone deaf. The butler held his hands apart a foot, a foot and a half.
The painter nodded. So, an infant. He figured he'd bring two canvases, though price meant little to the Mintons, who would surely require the full infant size. “I'll pack my equipment,” he said.
Prince got down at that and saw to his horse, which rolled its eyes white keeping track of the whip. Inside, Anson cleaned his brushes before selecting two of his best canvases, one right for a small child's head, shoulders, and arms, the other for the whole of a reclining infant, plus a fine pillow and a pretty rug, the comforts of the dead, such as he was well used to supplying. He loaded his cart with his paints, canvases, and easel, and Prince unbent enough to help hitch Meg, the chestnut mare, because time was of the essence, with that mild south wind blowing. When they were all set, Daisy jumped up beside Anson on the seat, and Prince put his horse to a trot.
The Mintons! Their portraits usually came from Boston or Philadelphia, and the magnitude of this professional opportunity made it hard for Anson to get into an appropriately somber frame of mind. The recording of the dead was an honor and a precious trust, and he tried to conduct himself accordingly, knowing that his work would gradually replace the bereaved's ever-shifting memories. Especially with children, painted images would prevail, and Anson did a lot of infants; youths too. Consumption, diphtheria, and fevers kept his business afloat; partial payment for the summer fever, followed by measles, that had taken his hearing and steered him to the limner's trade.
Still, mortuary portraits wouldn't have been his first choice; Anson preferred to do fancy pictures woven of his own imagination, but he had a gift for painting the departed, and there was an aptness about a silent painter for the silent dead. Not for him the gossip that endeared other itinerants, nor the sparkling repartee that charmed the ladies. He was, of necessity, a discreet painter, and the great silence within which he moved had instilled in Anson a salutary fear of the Lord. Jolting over dirt tracks just turning to mud in the lower places, Anson thought, as he so often did, about the mysterious workings of Providence, meditations interrupted today by thoughts of the fee he might command.
He did not like to take advantage of grief, but surely the Mintons would expect to pay something more than his usual. Ten dollars, Anson thought, maybe ten dollars would not be too much. He envisioned his work displayed to general admiration in the Minton's splendid parlor; he imagined new commissions, a rising reputation, perhaps even a winter in Boston. These were idle and insubstantial hopes, yet Anson knew himself talented, a good craftsman, a perceptive eye. He was sure he could do something spectacular for the Mintons, who had been great lords in the old style before the Revolution, and who were still the chief family in the county.
There were some questions about just how they had remained when other Tories fled north or shipped out from Boston. Probably their slave militia had something to do with their tenure, and Anson gave a glance at Prince—the last relic of those glories. The other Africans had decamped to sloth and penury, but Prince had remained to become chief butler and factotum. Powerful positions. Old Minton and he ran a vast network of farms. Half the county was in debt to Minton, and the other half was hoping to borrow money.
Anson reminded himself that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God, and clucked to Meg, encouraging her up a graveled drive. Ahead, on the brow of a hill, surrounded by elms and oaks, the family's big white house sprawled from the original planked cabin into a profusion of wings and lean-tos and porticos and facades.
Behind this building was a wide, muddy yard with a smokehouse, barns, stables, a woodshed, and root cellar. Poultry clucked underfoot and pigs strolled nonchalant. A pack of large, fierce dogs tore up, startling Daisy and setting Meg bucking and kicking until Prince laid about with his whip. In the wake of the dogs’ retreat came a tall, straight youth to take the horse's reins.
He had brilliant blue eyes and a perfect Grecian profile Anson itched to sketch. Then the lad turned. The whole left side of his face had been laid open, slashed as with a knife or a whip, and one of the beautiful eyes, swollen shut. Anson had trouble concealing his shock, and he couldn't help noticing that the groom flinched when Prince scowled. At the stable door, Anson tied Meg to the post and asked the groom to look after the dog. Then, burdened with his equipment, he followed the formidable butler across the stone flags of the kitchen floor and the imported tiles in the hallway, past the gleaming floors and fine rugs of the parlor to a small office smelling of wood smoke and tobacco.
The walls were lined with shelves of ledgers, and the desk was covered with papers and bills. Jeremiah Minton didn't rouse himself until Prince announced a visitor; then the old man looked Anson up and down and pursed his heavy lips, as if the offering did not suit his price. Minton had a lot of gray hair, worn long in the fashion of a generation before, and a deal of dirty linen. His eyes were dark, his brows heavy, his skin chapped and windburned, his expression forbidding.
"I am sorry for your loss,” Anson said. “May the Lord comfort you and your family."
Minton waved his hand. “A picture. How much?"
Anson understood. He held up the two canvases, took a breath, and greatly daring, said, “Seven and a half for the small, ten for the large."
Minton gave a hoarse laugh and pointed to the larger canvas; from his contemptuous expression, Anson guessed that he might have asked a good deal more.
The old man stood up, heavy and a bit stiff in one leg. Anson followed him to a chilly north room where a child lay in its cradle. The baby was perfectly formed, perhaps five or six months old, with golden hair and pretty little hands. Anson remembered that Minton's young wife was said to be a beauty. Certainly the child didn't betray any of the coarseness of its sire, for even in death, which sinks and collapses, the face was lovely. Anson felt a pang and also a slight excitement: He could already see a wonderful picture.
"May God bless this child.” Anson realized he did not know if it was a boy or a girl, but he thought a boy, the long sought heir, now lost, hence the picture. “The name?"
Minton gave him a fierce, evil look and shook his head. “What do you need a name for? You're painting him, not writing him."
Understanding that he was to be told nothing, Anson opened up his easel and laid down a scrap of old cloth to protect the floor. He put up his canvas, took out a stick of charcoal, and hesitated.
"What is it, man?” Minton demanded, impatient, it seemed, at the smallest delay.
"Something for the child to hold? It makes a better picture. A toy, some favorite thing, even a blanket. Perhaps your good wife might have just the item? Mothers often—"
Before he could finish, Minton twisted up his face as if in rage and laughed, revealing missing teeth, darkened molars, and a thick maroon tongue. “A good idea,” Minton said and clapped Anson on the shoulder.
The painter could not help shrinking. The instant he felt Minton's touch, Anson saw the handsome stableman with his mutilated face, and the savage dogs, and the white eyes of the nervous plow horse.
"I'll ask the lady myself,” Minton said. “Get to work.” He gestured as if holding a brush.
Anson bowed slightly
and began laying out the design with his charcoal. He would have to work quickly. He'd outline the child's body first to set up the design, then make some sketches of the face. He figured he'd have no more than a day, and even if he had longer, the child, the essence of the child, already so much diminished, would weaken further. He must be quick if he was to catch whatever was left, whatever would suggest the spirit now departed.
For the rest, the blankets, the toy, the embroidered trim on the gown, these could be filled in later, using a doll or a few pillows to supply the place of the body. The finishing glazes and touches that bring a painting to life could be added at his leisure; here, if the Mintons pleased, or in his own shop. But all that was nothing to the matter at hand, which was the precise proportion of the head to the body, of the hands to the arms. Anson went over and raised the child's head a little with the pillow. Then he drew his stool nearer to the cradle and began the lines of the head.
How difficult infants are! How large the forehead, how small the features, yet the eyes are large, even in death. Anson was distracted for an instant by the question of the color of the child's eyes, not that it could matter for this picture, which would show the infant asleep, asleep in the bosom of Abraham. Sometimes parents wanted the deceased depicted as if alive—a tricky matter. But there was no need in this case to wonder, to worry about its eyes. No, no, he must concentrate on the difficult line of the lids, it being so easy to make children either look ancient or doll-like. This painting would be perfect, all the lines exact: the nose softly curving, the lips neatly formed and meeting gently the plump line of the cheek, the tiny perfections of the hands and nails. Oh yes, he could do it.
Several hours passed before a little servant, no more than a child herself, brought him cider and some bread and cheese. Anson hated to leave his easel, but believing it disrespectful to eat in front of his sad subject, he went out to the yard and shared his lunch with Daisy. When he was finished, he returned the tankard to the kitchen and headed eagerly back to work. The design was good. He had stepped back as far as the doorway and covered one eye and held up his little black mirror, and each check showed that all was harmonious. As for his sketch of the head, Anson was hopeful but unsure. You could get too close to your work, lose the perspective. It was good to take a break and come back with fresh eyes.
AHMM, March 2007 Page 10
