Fugitive Colors (Sigrid Harald Mysteries) [Mass Market Paperback]

Margaret Maron (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 1996 | Series: Sigrid Harald Mysteries

Losing a fellow officer in a shoot-out is enough to rattle Sigrid's cool, controlled demeanor. Discovering that her lover, famous artist Oscar Nauman, has also been killed devastates her. She withdraws from her colleagues, her police career, her life. But it is art she cannot escape: Oscar has left her his paintings worth millions, and galleries are clamoring to sell them. Just as the early Italian masters painted a wash of vermilion over green to produce the warm flesh tones of their Madonnas - only to have time fade the red to leave a deathlike tint behind - Sigrid begins to see through the vibrant surface of New York's art world to the interplay of revenge, greed, and power beneath. These are motives she recognizes from her police work as catalysts for murder. And when a shocking homicide occurs, it hits close to home for Sigrid, implicating Oscar's friends and fellow artists in the crime. Her desire to find the killer now puts Sigrid back on the job and out on the street. More than justice is at stake: whether she can still cut it on the force and whether she will ever again dare to love hangs in the balance. Fugitive Colors goes beyond the whodunit genre to combine a top-notch mystery with a portrait of a woman cop indelibly changed - able to notice the background details, the subtle shades, and the feelings that ultimately damn or save us all.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Although it has been five years since readers last met NYPD homicide detective Lt. Sigrid Harald (in Past Imperfect), only two fictional months have elapsed since Sigrid's lover, painter Oscar Nauman, died and left his entire estate, worth millions, to her as both legatee and executor. Still grieving, Sigrid returns to work and to the Manhattan art scene to authorize a Nauman retrospective?and it's tough to say which venue is less civilized. While Sigrid's detectives cope with a mother who insists her ne'er-do-well son's suicide was really murder, Sigrid herself gets a look at the dirt trapped under high culture's polished veneer. Soon after a painter angrily causes a ruckus at an opening staged by a prominent art dealer, Sigrid discovers the dealer's bludgeoned corpse in Oscar's?now her?studio apartment. Although Sigrid assigns one of her men to take charge of the case, it is her own sensitivity to enmities and old grudges in the art world that finally reveals the entire picture, although not before another life is lost. Maron adeptly establishes a coolly thematic and deceptive link among the deaths as she constructs her affecting mystery out of distinctive blend of art-world politics, past crimes and present grief.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Maron reawakens a too-long dormant series with the return of Lt. Sigrid Harald of the NYPD. The deaths of a fellow officer and of her artist lover throw Sigrid into decline?until her lover's legacy of valuable paintings leads to the murder of a greedy art dealer.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Mysterious Press (June 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446403938
• ISBN-13: 978-0446403931
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.3 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #470,976 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

MARGARET MARON is the author of twenty-seven novels and two collections of short stories. Winner of several major American awards for mysteries (Edgar, Agatha, Anthony, Macavity), her works are on the reading lists of various courses in contemporary Southern literature and have been translated into 15 languages. She has served as president of Sisters in Crime, the American Crime Writers League, and Mystery Writers of America. Visit her at www.MargaretMaron.com.

A native Tar Heel, she still lives on her family's century farm a few miles southeast of Raleigh, the setting for Bootlegger's Daughter, which is numbered among the 100 Favorite Mysteries of the Century as selected by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association. In 2004, she received the Sir Walter Raleigh Award for best North Carolina novel of the year; and in 2008, the North Carolina Award for Literature, the state's highest civilian honor. Her mystery novels feature District Court Judge Deborah Knott and are the pegs upon which she hangs her love and concern for the state.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Last, but not best, in the Sigrid Harald Series, January 24, 2002

By 

Gerald M. Bull "Jerry Bull" (Fairview, TN United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Fugitive Colors (Sigrid Harald Mysteries) (Mass Market Paperback)

Probably most readers know Margaret Maron better for her more recently published and more contemporary stories about (Judge) Deborah Knott. The Sigrid Harald series dates from the mid-80's to this, the last of the set (the eighth), Fugitive Colors, published in 1995 after a 5-year hiatus from #7. These books remind one of almost classic Ellery Queen type stories: long on police procedures, complexity of plot, and wrapping things up cleanly at the end; somewhat shorter on interesting characters, locales, or other diversions to enhance the entertainment value. Like watching an old TV show in black and white, our leading lady Sigrid is herself kind of a plain, by-the-books supervisor without much femininity or complexity. She did take on a much older lover somewhere along the line, an Arts Professor and painter (Oscar Nauman). He suddenly turns up dead (auto accident) at the start of this story, certainly an unexpected development; and we spend much of the first part of the book with Sigrid out of work grieving, art galleries posturing over showing and selling his works, etc. The mystery doesn't really get going until one of the art scene gallery principals is found quite dead. At that point, things pretty much returned to techniques of the earlier works.

I generally liked this somewhat old-fashioned series of mysteries. I grew somewhat fond of Sigrid despite her shyness and low profile, and there were signs she was gaining more worldliness with every passing book. There was just enough continuing story with some of her colleagues, and her painter-lover, that the characters were becoming more accustomed, more familiar friends. And make no mistake, Maron is a fine writer. I would rate most if not all of the other stories as "4's". But somehow, the disjointed start to this one, the fact that it almost seemed like the last of the series (even if I had not known it), just didn't provide the expected enjoyment. It was almost like the publisher insisted Maron dust Sigrid off and give us one more for the gipper, but that she did so reluctantly. Maybe her lack of joy translated into our own, hence the "3".

I guess I'll go see what Deborah Knott is up to!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Ugly background to beautiful art, June 16, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Fugitive Colors (Hardcover)

This Sigrid Harald mystery follows two cases simultaneously--the murder or suicide of a spoiled drug user, estranged from his wife and baby daughter, and the murder of a second-generation art dealer in New York City. The perpetrators of these acts may come as a surprise. Sigrid Harald may not be as popular as Deborah Knott, but she and her police colleagues take on distinct personalities as the author begins to flesh out their characteristics.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A fast moving Sigrid Harald mystery, July 17, 2000

By 

Moe811 (New York USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Fugitive Colors (Sigrid Harald Mysteries) (Mass Market Paperback)

I usually don't enjoy the Sigrid Harald series, she is a little too one dimensional. This novel, however makes her a real person and not a stick figure with all the really interesting people around her. The mystery is great and the book moves very quickly with a nice twist at the end. The characters-cops, artists, and gallery owners are all very quirky, making this a very easy book to read.