** - I picked this one up because I'm a big fan of the National Gallery, and of Caravaggio. I figured a murder mystery with an art basis would be a great distraction from the rigors of studying for the bar. But this novel just failed to impress me.
Senior curator of the National Gallery Luther Mason is a renowned Caravaggio expert - and he's mounting a world-class Caravaggio exhibit as the highlight of his illustrious career. And the exhibition only becomes more glamorous when Mason manages to unearth a long-lost Caravaggio masterpiece known as Grottesca. But a string of forgeries and double-crosses put the exhibition and the lives of several people at risk, so gallery owner Annabel Reed-Smith steps in to investigate.
Murder at the National Gallery is Book 13 in the Capitol Crimes series set in Washington, DC featuring sleuth Annabel Reed-Smith and her husband. I haven't read any of the others in the series, so I can't really comment on Annabel's growth or anything of that sort. It seemed to me, though, that Annabel was barely involved in the case for the most part. She was around a bit here and there (particularly the end), but she never seemed to do much investigating herself. It seemed much more like she just happened to be along for the ride.
I actually quite enjoyed the story of the forgeries of the Caravaggio and the double-crosses that involved the Mafia and unscrupulous black market buyers. I was even rooting for the swap to be pulled off - despite my actual outrage at people placing fake masterpieces in museums. There were snippets of art history lessons, some fun background about how the National Gallery works, and a decent protagonist. What there wasn't for 300 pages, was a murder.
I don't know about you, but when I see a title like Murder at the National Gallery - I think there's going to be a murder. And then that the main character is going to investigate said murder. I do not think there will first be three hundred of art intrigue (though that's cool) before anyone non-peripheral dies. So given the expectations (I think justifiable because of the title), it just moved way too slowly. And there was no real investigation.
The resolution was quite irritating - one of the main orchestrators of the whole mess was just despicable and got nothing remotely resembling comeuppance. Given the entire convoluted set-up, I just didn't think the ending was particularly satisfying. Maybe the whole thing just wasn't - not enough art, not enough inside DC workings, and not enough of our supposed protagonist to make me at all interested in reading the others in the series, despite my interest in DC settings.
I would give this one a miss - or at least go into it with very different expectations. It's not so much a murder-mystery as a story of a double-cross.
Some Caravaggio for you:
Bacchus (this is the model thought to have been used in the fictional work Grottesca)
Interested in other opinions?
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