Framed [Paperback]

Tonino Benacquista (Author), Adriana Hunter (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 2006

Praise for Holy Smoke, the first in the Antoine series:

“A terrific black comedy …both a blasphemously funny satire of provincial Italian chicanery and a wry acknowledgment of the ambivalence that ambitious immigrants feel about their roots.”—The New York Times

“Unexpected deadly demands made in the name of friendship inspire the plot of this quirky mystery novel. Irreverently inveighs against romantic love, cancer and the Paris suburbs.”—The Washington Post

“An iconoclastic chronicle of small-time crooks and desperate capers, with added Gallic and Italian flair. Wonderful fun.”—Guardian

Antoine, a fanatic billiards player, is asked to watch over a Paris art gallery. When he scuffles with a thief a statue falls and severs his right hand. His maverick investigation leads to the discovery of a series of gruesome killings. Soon Antoine finds himself the prime suspect in the murder of a gallery owner. A game of billiards decides the outcome of this satirical tale which brilliantly captures the world of modern art and the parasites that infest it.

After being, in turn, a museum night-watchman, and a train guard on the Paris-Rome line, Tonino Benacquista is now a highly successful author of fiction and film scripts.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

French author Benacquista (Holy Smoke) delivers another darkly comic crime novel. His eccentric narrator, Antoine, supports his love of playing billiards with a day job hanging paintings at a Paris art gallery. When Antoine interrupts an intruder in the midst of vandalizing an abstract work by an obscure painter, Etienne Morand, the man topples a heavy sculpture on Antoine, crushing his right hand. The loss of his hand further warps Antoine's already idiosyncratic personality and leads him on a quest for his assailant that involves several corpses and suspicions that there may not have been a real artist named Morand. The author's familiarity with the European art world lends plausibility to the fraud plot, while the unusual main character makes a refreshing change from the stock hero of so much genre fiction. (July)
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Review

"Unexpected deadly demands made in the name of friendship inspire the plot of this quirky mystery novel. The phrase "black comedy" was invented for just this kind of book. Irreverently inveighs against romantic love, cancer and the Paris suburbs. Washington Post "An iconoclastic chronicle of small-time crooks and desperate capers, with added Gallic and Italian flair. Wonderful fun." Guardian "An entertainingly cynical story. I read it in one sitting." Observer "This prizewinning novel is guaranteed to keep you up late at night, driven to discover the ending. Its exciting, funny and bizarrely even includes tips on cooking Italian food.." Coventry Evening Telegraph "Boisterous black comedy...funny and good-hearted, with much incident and expert enthusiasm for sex, food and drink." Literary Review"

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Bitter Lemon Press; First Edition. pb original edition (July 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1904738168
• ISBN-13: 978-1904738169
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,612,272 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars New French Noir, August 3, 2006

By 

Glenn Harper "www.internationalnoir.blogspot.com" (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Framed (Paperback)

Framed, the third novel in translation from French crime and film writer Tonino Benacquista, fulfills the promise of his first novel, Holy Smoke, much more than the second novel, Someone Else. But Framed is very different from Holy Smoke (and from the Highsmith-y Someone Else). If you want the further adventures of the comic hero of Holy Smoke, in English, you'll have to go to a film from a couple of years ago, Love Bites. In Framed, Antoine keeps his day job, as an art handler in a contemporary art gallery, and his night passion, for billiards, completely separate--his friends in one world know nothing of the other world. Unlike the choice that a classic noir writer would surely have made, most of the novel focuses on the day world (dark though it indeed is) rather than the billiard hall. The choice is telling: Benacquista lets us know that he knows where his tale would traditionally be told, and indeed comes back to that world for his denoument; but he shifts the focus into a new realm for noir, fully and realistically rendered (if quite cynically portrayed). Framed is a short and fast novel, a fun read, and highly recommended.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating tale of mystery and intrigue, July 15, 2006

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Framed (Paperback)

Tonino Benacquista's new mystery novel Framed is the riveting story of Antoine, a daytime picture hanger for some of Paris' most fashionable and renounced art galleries, and his pursuit of an art-thief who had attacked him in one of the more fashionable art galleries in the City of Lights. Brilliantly carrying readers through a fascinating tale of mystery and intrigue with an engaging and often humorous narrative of Antoine's amateur investigation, Framed follows his life as two people are found dead in the course of his investigation with one of the deceased having been a prime suspect! Introducing the reader to a world of art fraud and avarice, Framed is very strongly recommended as thoroughly entertaining, darkly humorous, deliberately iconoclastic, and simply brilliantly from beginning to end.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars satirical French Noir, July 5, 2006

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Framed (Paperback)

In Paris, Antoine Andrieux's passion is playing billiards; he loves the strategy needed to be victorious in the game and plays every evening at the top parlors. To afford his nightly habit, Antoine hangs paintings especially for special showings at the most exclusive galleries in the city. His patrons consider him an artist of sorts; so does his billiards rivals.

Currently he is working on a retrospective of the abstractionist Etienne Morand, who always used black except for his last known work, Attempt 30, which is golden yellow. The day after the opening, Antoine arrives at the gallery to make subtle corrections to the display only to find someone in attendance vandalizing a painting. Antoine tries to stop the intruder, but his adversary topples a sculpture destroying his hand and ultimately his sense of worth as he can no longer hang painting and emotionally worse play billiards. Vowing to find his enemy and take appropriate revenge, Antoine begins an investigation only to find the refine art world is outside his understanding even as he becomes FRAMED as the prime suspect in a homicide.

On the surface this translation of a French Noir uses typical throwaway gimmicks like phone tips, but those actually serve as satirical devices that enhance this dark amusing crime caper by comparing felonies (including murder) to artistry. Antoine is a terrific protagonist whose obsession with billiards becomes a compassionate fixation to avenge all that he lost by being a loyal employee. Through his works the obscure Morand comes to life leading even deeper into the delightful comedic comparison between art and crime. HOLY SMOKE, Tonino Benacquista artistically paints a humorous winner.

Harriet Klausner