Customer Reviews

Art Kills (Sounds Like Murder Series)

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4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
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1 star:		(4)

 

 

I can't imagine how such a thing could get printed. It is evidently a vehicle for portraying Lesbian love, with a few nods here and there to great art (brought in to validate the title, one presumes) plenty of four-letter words and allusions to The Mob, to make things move along. I checked the book out at my local library because of the quotations from reviews from "Kirkus Review," the "Los Angeles Times Book Review," etc. on the back cover, and all I can say is that the reviewers must have been describing some other book.

For the masochistic crowd out there, this is a great read! The most outrageously BAD waste of tree pulp I've come in mental contact with for quite some time- I felt like taking a brainwash after!. Don't let the title fool you like I did- there is NOTHING in this book about art... He does some name-dropping of "Oh, I know who he is!" artists and the main "character" (I put it in quotes so that you won't confuse it with a real characterization) is nominally a art appraiser/James Bond wannabe- we all know how many of THOSE are lurking out there in the world!

Oh yeah, besides the poor characterizations and the stereotyped mobsters, there is the MELODRAMA--- OH GOD!! THE MELODRAMA!! If you don't believe me, just read the opening paragraph on the "look inside this book" page. I could go on, but it's just too painful... let me just finish by saying that I challenged my wife to read this book without throwing it across the room and she failed. Thank god it was a library book and I didn't spend any loot on it- I'd rather boil my eyeballs in cod liver oil than contribute a cent to the royalties of the illustrious Lustbader.

This is an average skeleton outlining the plot of what may well be an enjoyable novel when the author gets round to writing it. Only problem is somehow this plot idea skeleton has been published as the actual finished novel when it clearly lacks substance. This plot outline is about an art expert who witnesses a colleague she doesn't much like get hit by a car. Someone steals his briefcase and she stupidly decides to tail the thief to an apartment and steal the briefcase for herself. Now not really explained proplerly in the story this woman was somehow set up to do just what she did and is taken at gunpoint to a mansion where she has to validate the painting inside the briefcase as a real priceless Raphael. Although the characters are not really explained in any depth the family in the mansion is at war with other parts of the extended family and she ends up out of the blue sleeping with the daughter of the owner of the house for no apparent reason other than the author probably has some lesbian bedroom fantasies he wants to put on paper. She has to somehow figure out how to get the Raphael into safe museum hands and survive.

This short story (it is only 80 less than half the size of A4 pages of above normal sized font) is like a primary school child's effort at writing a story. Well actually I'm sure they can do better. Out of the blue suddenly one character is interacting with another as if they've known each other all their lives with no explanation as to how they even know each other or character development at all. I won't waste my time or money on other poor literacy efforts by this author.

This review is submitted as a warning. The pretentiousness of Art Kills is exceeded only by its ineptness of execution. The characters became so ludicrous that my friends and I were laughing by the end and only wished that the main character was eliminated in the final bloodbath. There is now a danger of a sequel.

This novella is short and to the point, as any novella is likely to be. If you've ever read any of Lustbader's other mystery/adventure novels, then you've got the gist of Art Kills. And if you strip away the sub-plots, exotic locales and Eastern themes of his other novels you've got Art Kills exactly. It's like taking a movie and telling the main story in an one hour tv show instead. You don't loose much with this novella. You've got intrigue, tension, violence and a love story all packed together nicely in here. As a quick read it was pretty good. I give it a B on the StuPage.

The other reviewers are spot-on about this short novel. Buy it as a comedy, not as a thriller. I listened to the audiobook version, read by an accomplished Broadway performer named Alison Fraser. It must have taken no small effort on her part to maintain a straight face while namedropping painters from Art 101; spouting extremely well-worn Mafia cliches; describing a (spoilers omitted) romance that develops extremely quickly; revealing nonsensical plot twists; and so forth. Fraser's performance is very strong, so much so that I believe it was essential to my enjoyment of this work. With that said, I have to admire Eric Van Lustbader's writing for a certain elegance (which I have not found in his other novels): it is highly compacted trash.

I bought this audiobook to keep me company on a trip, and because I like the author's other work. I enjoyed the story mostly, although it seemed an awful lot like the lead in to a much longer story (perhaps as aborted book?)