Customer Reviews

Murder At The Gardner

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I was amazed to see that this book had only received one bad review. This is a wonderful book - one in a series of mysteries with a loveable absent-minded professor who speaks his mind and bumbles into all sorts of mischief while solving complex murders. The author also adds her own drawings, which are a nice touch. I highly recommend all the Homer Kelly mysteries-I have read them all - if you like your mysteries to have some weight too them. Not too fluffy, but not overly erudite either.

What I like most about reading Jane Langton's Homer Kelly novels is that I get to enjoy a gripping plot while at the same time learning something. With this book, I got to learn about the Gardner Museum while I enjoyed the suspenseful story. And her murder mysteries are set in interesting and genteel places, so that I get the benefit of the suspense without having to feel like my soul is being dragged through all the darkest places in human consciousness. Ms. Langton's writing style is also very pleasant, and I enjoy the pace of her stories. I select her books when I want to be pleasantly entertained.

Jane Langton's mystery novels always present a detailed and engrossing picture of a small, intricately structured world and the people in it (here, the Gardner Museum in Boston). Her writing style is hard to describe -- it's seemingly effortless, yet lyrical at the same time, with hidden secondary meanings sprinkled here and there. A really fine book.

Until March 18, 1990 Jan Vermeer's impressive 17th century painting "The Concert" hung on the wall of the Dutch room of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in the Boston Fenway area. This small but elegant museum, a Venetian palace, houses the special collections of a very wealthy woman. It is also the setting of Jane Langton's seventh Homer Kelly mystery published in 1988.

Langton has written eighteen Homer Kelly mysteries: all except THE ESCHER TWIST are illustrated with her very fine line drawings. This is my first HK read. Through the words and drawings of the author's cozy mystery, I re-lived a 1984 visit to the Gardner. But the murder is coincidental, the detective is ineffective, and the characters are quirky. The young curator Titus Moon and his two pretty female assistants (one is the Mayor of Boston's niece). The seven trustees including a yellow-eyed tapestry repairer named Catherine Rule who saves the day in a wheelchair. Tom Duck, an ex-boxer who enjoys slipping in the Gardner to see the pretty flowers in the Courtyard and the pictures. Even the ex-detective now Harvard professor Homer Kelly appears vague in manner and costume: his six feet six inch frame in a tweed coat with perhaps a bow tie. The murder victim is a bit strange, too: she is one of the flower ladies who frequents the Museum cafe. Her bequest to the Gardner is a joke and had previously been refused by the Boston Museum of Art.

I visited the Gardner in 1984 to see the magnificent John Singer Sargent portrait of Isabella Stewart Gardner (1888) which is a oil on canvas and is approximately six feet tall by three feet wide. The portrait is shown in a tower on the hardcover edition of the novel's dust jacket and still presides grandly at the Gardner Museum today.

2.5 stars out of 5

Jane

Details of the 1990 theft of Vermeer's "The Concert," three Rembrandt's and other items can be found in Ulrich Boser's non-fiction illustrated book The Gardner Heist: The True Story of the World's Largest Unsolved Art Theft.

I have just visited the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston for the first time, so pounced on this novel. The characters are quirky. The interesting setting is integral to the story. The information on the Gardener and it's masterpieces is well-woven into the plot. The characters' philosophical musings and the lovely illustrations are a rare treat in an adult mystery novel. The mystery itself was fun. However, the ineptness of the detective called in to investigate was frustrating and hard to swallow. I suppose it was to spin the story out, but really, to never interview or investigate the people who should have been major suspects and to not proceed at all methodically strained credulity. The failure of the museum staff to do take certain actions also was not credible. I didn't enjoy knowing who the suspect was, but that's just personal preference.

However, it was still a fun and unusual read, way better than a lot of series mysteries around these days. The detective isn't a stereotypical or stagnant character but develops in his view of art through the story. I just hope he proceeds more logically in the author's other Homer Kelly Mysteries. The author lives in Concord and writes mysteries set in the Boston, New England and other historic settings, including Gettysburg, Florence and Venice, reminding me somewhat of Margaret Truman's mysteries set in DC landmarks. It's also reminiscent of Michael David Anthony's Canterbury, England mysteries, which are also intelligent and informative.

An interesting note: in spite of the author's assurance in the afterward that Gardener is 'superbly protected', two years after publication, two men posing as policemen gained entrance and stole 13 masterpieces. This largest art heist in history remains unsolved and the masterpieces still missing.

In another fabulous detective novel, Jane Langton uses the genre to bring back into the limelight the little gem of a museum in Boston, MA, called the Gardner Museum. Langton supplies her signature line drawings to introduce us to specific works in the museum, and the action takes us to the environs in which the museum is located. You don't have to be a native of the area to love Langton's works, although those who are will gain a special appreciation of New England treasures while being entertained in high style.

Cute!

I was at the Gardner last year, and they sell signature-bound paperback books about the museum in the gift shop, which they recommend to potential buyers as souvenirs of the experience.

I bought one of those books, but personally, I think they ought to sell copies of this novel there, since it's also a wonderful way to relive the experience of the museum. Between the vivid descriptions of the space itself, the well-drawn illustrations (done by the author, a woman of many talents), and a gripping plot, this novel has it all.

I picked this book up because I love both Boston and the Garder Museum. The author has clearly done her research. Unfortunately, it shows a bit too much. I read it three days after I visited the Gardner; I found myself wishing I'd read it before, so that I could bring it along to use as a guidebook. It sometimes felt as though the exposition on how Wonderful and Fabulous the Gardner Museum is (which it is) and where the Vermeer is placed (which I'm sure is correct) got in the way of the plot.

I should also say that I'm not a big fan of mystery novels where the killer is revealed early on. This was not a tightly-wound psychological mystery, so I REALLY wasn't a fan of the fact that the reader was more or less told who the killer was long, LONG before the conclusion of the book. It was a procedural. And I was thinking, "Okay, I know who did it, get to the point already."

That was a general problem with a lot of the plot-- things were a little bit too telegraphed for my taste, although I think that's a matter of personal preference. We're told who is in love with who, and we're given minor characters that are more stereotypes than anything else. When their stereotypical qualities start having a bearing on the plot, it irritates me, since these qualities are those that are not possessed by normal people out in the real world. Similarly, a bequest figures heavily in the book, and a big part of it is that no one knows what the bequest really will be. I-- let's just say I found myself wondering about whether or not the denoument of that plotline would ever have been played out in an actual museum.

On the other hand, I was really really anxious by one of the climactic moments of the book, which has more to do with the Gardner than the mystery, although a little of both. I was biting-my-nails anxious, even though I knew that the scene didn't really happen in the Real Life History of the Gardner. I love that museum, I really do. And certainly the book provides a nice overview of the place and its history and its eccentric but well-intentioned founder.

Total waste of time. The characters are contrived, shallow and affected, the plot boring and predictable