Spent Matches: A Crime Novel [Hardcover]

Shelly Reuben (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 7, 1996

Fire investigator Wylie Nolan and attorney Max Bramble investigate the causes of three puzzling fires, including one involving valuable paintings at the Zigfield Museum.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Author Shelley Reuben has her own arson investigation business, and she brings all her technical know-how to bear in this crime mystery, as well as a finely developed romantic attachment to the "magic of fire." New York City arson investigator Wylie Nolan is called in to get to the bottom of a seemingly inexplicable case: valuable paintings housed in the locked maximum security room of a museum seem to have spontaneously combusted. Reuben's eccentric characters are charming, and engaging sub-plots swirl like smoke around the main story.

From Publishers Weekly

Reuben, who runs a fire investigation firm in New York City, writes with considerable technical authority in this inventive story of arson. She also fuels her tale with lively characters, such as 80-year-old Wegman Zigfield, who has used his fortune to convert a church into an art museum, dubbed Zigfield's folly, and to fill it with 19th-century paintings. He has just fired his incompetent son for staging a stunningly mediocre show of contemporary art by an artist whose career has clearly burned out?but not as fast as his canvases. In the middle of the night, the five of them go up in flames, leaving premier fire expert Wylie Nolan (seen previously in Origin and Cause) with five frames and five piles of ashes. Even more puzzling, the flames activated neither smoke detectors nor heat sensors; and, according to the crack security system, no one entered the gallery at all that evening. While the museum is facing its darkest hour, most of the staff is on edge, largely because of Georgiana Weeks, the beautiful visiting curator who could have inspired one of the Pre-Raphaelites whose show she is organizing. Reuben wisely balances the acerbic Nolan's techno-speak with subplots involving the lives and loves of the staff, some of whom harbor ambitions or grudges that appear to be, well, flammable. A nice foil for all the art-world flamboyance, the low-key Nolan cuts cleanly through lies and puffery to find the truth.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 313 pages
• Publisher: Scribner (July 7, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684801078
• ISBN-13: 978-0684801070
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,355,826 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting mysteries but no integration, February 18, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Spent Matches: A Crime Novel (Hardcover)

This mystery novel presents three interesting arson investigations in the context of a single story, but the 3 don't hang together. The book comes off as a poorly integrated set of what could have been 3 great short stories. The writing is OK, not great, but the primary mystery is a whopper. Imagine a locked room arson in which 5 paintings are destroyed -- but their frames left charred but intact.