Product Description

In 2006, the art world has moved far beyond sheep in formaldehyde and the most avant-garde movement is to use living people as artwork. Undergoing weeks of preparation to become 'canvases', the models are required to stay in their pose for ten to twelve hours a day and, as art pieces, they are also for sale. After being exhibited, the 'canvases' can be bought and taken to the purchaser's home, where they are rented for weeks or months. Many beautiful young men and women long to become a 'canvas' - knowing they are a masterpeice and worth millions seems to make all the sacrifices worthwhile - especially if they can be 'painted' by the celebrated artist Bruno Van Tysch. But there is a darker side to this art movement when it is found that the models/works of art are sometimes used in interactive works - snuff movies, where the 'art' is filmed being tortured and killed. Van Tysch's work is being targeted and the investigators must find the killer before the displays of imitations of Rembrandt's masterpieces - the biggest exhibition of 'hyperdramatic art' yet seen - is put on show.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1084863 in Books
• Published on: 2004-09-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 470 pages

Review
For THE ATHENIAN MURDERS: 'A delightfully paranoic read on both ancient and modern planes with enough literary cunning to satisfy fans of Nabokov's PALE FIRE as well as THE NAME OF THE ROSE' - INDEPENDENT 'Extremely subtle and intelligent...totally absorbing' - EVENING STANDARD 'It works, superbly' INDEPENDENT ON S 'A thriller of great originality, with a detective to rival Chief Inspector Morse as one of the cleverest in crime fiction' S TELEGRAPH

By 2006, the new hot use of the art world is fur beyond a shark lying in formaldehyde. It's beautiful young men and women become real-life pieces of art that could be either standing in a museum for twelve hours a day or bought and taken to the purchaser's home. The biggest honour for those human 'canvasses' is being 'painted' by the celebrated artist Bruno Von Tysch, who can make themselves into masterpieces that worth millions. But after it is found that some models are tortured and killed, an investigation is open on Von Tysch and the new artistic movement. Jose Carlos Somoza, former doctor and psychiatrist, delivered a gripping thriller which draws you in and forces you to have a look into your inner perspectives and beliefs. (Kirkus UK)

A serial killer terrorizes an unusual art world where people are objects for purchase as well as models. Though his story is set in the summer of 2006, Somoza offers a futuristic premise: Beautiful young girls, and some boys, are made over by famous artists into priceless works, displayed in museums and galleries, and sold to wealthy collectors. Painted sienna and ochre, 14-year-old Annek Hollech stands immobile behind a rope in a Viennese museum as a work called Deflowering, by the Dutch neo-master Bruno van Tysch. Shortly afterward, she's found brutally, perhaps ritualistically murdered in the remote woods. Suspicion falls first upon Oscar D'az, employed by the artist to shepherd the young artwork. Two of Tysch's other employees, the urbane team of Lothar Bosch and April Wood, seem to have more clout than local police and more interest in solving the crime. Their on-and-off investigation is upstaged by the odyssey of Clara Reyes, a slightly older, more experienced version of Annek, who accepts a potentially dangerous booking swathed in secrecy and finds a dangerous underworld of fetishism, torture and sexual slavery indicated by the story's original title of Clara and Shade. Murder and the threat of more provides a pulse of underlying tension, but Somoza (The Athenian Murders, 2001, etc.) elegantly explores larger metaphysical and artistic issues. (Kirkus Reviews)

About the Author
Jose Carlos Somoza was born in Habana in 1959. A doctor of medicine, and specialist in psychiatry, he has been writing full-time since 1994. He has received, amongst other awards, the Cervantes Theatre Prize and the Cafe Gijon Prize, and in 2000 his novel DAFNE DESVANECIDA was shortlisted for one of the most important Spanish literary prizes, the Nadal Prize.

Customer Reviews

fantastic, surprising, disturbing
It took me two chapters before I realised that I had completely accepted the implausable concept of hyperdramatic art. People working as canvasses and ornaments are described so well, I was caught up in a very strange world!
I bought this book looking for a good crime thriller. This is so much more. Easily the best book I've read this year

The Art of Murder, Jose Carlos Somoza
Reading a lot of crime fiction, the thing I tend to prize above all else, the thing that will most immediately impress me, is originality. And that is a quality Jose Carlos Somoza has in spades. On the evidence thus far, anyway. I hesitate to call The Athenian Murders a masterpiece, but I shouldn't really be so reticent, because it is. A completely brilliant murder mystery that turned into an examination of Plato and a shocking philosophical puzzle. It won the Gold Dagger, and the CWA will probably never make such an inspired decision again.

The Art of Murder (the Spanish title, Clara and Shade, is both better and far more effective considering the context of the novel) is similarly original, yet not quite as brilliant. It certainly won't win the Dagger again, but it'll probably still end up as one of the best novels of the year, due to its concept and the obvious intelligence that lies behind every single page.

The year is 2006, and the latest craze in the art world is "hyperdramatism". Human beings become the canvases, the art, and are exhibited in museums, bought and rented by collectors. Young men and women queue up for the privilege of being turned into "works of art", painted and signed; made famous. Individualism has gone out of the window; people are turned into a celebrated commodity.

The most acclaimed artist of all is Dutch master Bruno van Tysch, reclusive and enigmatic. However, when Annek Hollech, a model in his exhibition "Flowers", is abducted and killed, the lines between the canvas and the person behind it become confusingly blurred. Agents from van Tysch's security agency, April Wood and Lothar Bosch, are assigned to investigate the murder. Their job is made harder by the secrecy that the investigation has to be kept in - news must not get out or there would be outcry and panic. On top of that, van Tysch is about to launch a major new exhibition in Amsterdam - based on 13 of Rembrandt's masterpieces - and suspicions are rife that the murdered is about to strike again.

This novel succeeds admirably on several levels. Firstly, it succeeds as a knowing critique of a society which invests so much in appearance, in humans as a commodity. It also succeeds, hugely, as an investigation into everything concerned with art - its relevance, its morality (this strand stretches far out of art though, and encompasses humans in general), its future, its importance. He raises large questions, and you'd never think that such an abstract a topic as "art" could form such solid foundations for a novel ideas, which is partly what this book is.

It's sharply written and well-translated, and you get the sense of a formidable intelligence behind it all - as with his previous book. Possibly it is slightly too long. As a whole, it is not quite as good as The Athenian Murders, a cerebral masterpiece, and it's end isn't as stunning (none are, though) but that doesn't mean it isn't great. Apparently there are no more books immediately scheduled to be translated, but I dearly hope that that state of affairs will change. Somoza's prize-winning, boundary-smashing novels should all be translated into English, and I for one will gladly read them as they are.

Original ideas
The story is based in the art world of Europe. The most popular art is hyperdramatism, where people are the canvas. The canvases are painted daily and hold their positions, without moving, every day for 10 hours in museums or private collections. There is large demand to be canvases especially for the masters such as Bruno van Tysch and people go on training courses, take drugs to stop bodily functions and practise holding positions for the honour to become a masterpiece worth millions of dollars.

However there is a dark side to the hyperdramatic movement, with the illegal creation of ornaments where canvases are turned into everyday objects e.g. lamps, chairs, the kidnapping of children to be used as canvases and in this book the murder of some of Bruno van Tysch's finest pieces.

Although this is a murder mystery book I didn't think of it in that way. I was so absorbed in how well the hyperdramatic movement was explained and developed through the book (I could actually believe it really existed) that I very rarely thought about who the murder could be. The debate on morality throughout the book was also fascinating; is hyperdramatism cruel even though people want to be canvases, and were the victims murdered people or destroyed pieces of art.

I really enjoyed this book as the ideas were so original and I would recommend it to others to read although I'm not sure I would read it a second time. I didn't realise it was a translation till I was near the end of the book, so I think the translator did a fantastic job as the story flows brilliantly.