An art historian's trip to Venice to study a landmark painting turns into an effort to solve a murder mystery in this intelligent but murky second novel by Spanish writer de Prada (his first to be published in English), which mixes elements of crime fiction with musings on the process of evaluating great art. Alejandro Ballesteros is the Spanish protagonist who arrives in Italy to study The Tempest, a painting by Renaissance artist Giorgione that represented an important breakthrough in the use of landscape. But Ballesteros's expectations for a quiet academic interlude are overturned when he witnesses the murder of art dealer Fabio Valenzin and is caught up in the subsequent investigation. The naïve art historian is fascinated by the intrigue at first, especially when it leads to a series of romantic and erotic interludes, the most significant with an art restorer named Chiara who turns out to be Valenzin's adopted daughter. The case bogs down in a morass of local politics, but is finally revealed to turn on the contents of a chest belonging to Valenzin that contains clues to a well-crafted, diabolical forgery plot. De Prada does a good job balancing the murder mystery with his exploration of the history of Giorgione's painting, but the romantic tangents make the book cluttered and busy. An ensemble cast of eccentric secondary characters and a foggy, evocative portrayal of Venice help blur the missteps, and the murder resolution is reasonably satisfying if somewhat slow to arrive. (June)
Forecast:
The Tempest is a big seller in Spanish (300,000 copies in print), and de Prada appeared in a
New Yorker photo spread of hot young European writers a few years ago, but the book may prove a wobbly launchpad for de Prada in the U.S.
