Customer Reviews

A deceptive clarity

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

 

 

I stumbled on Aaron Elkins awhile ago, and I promptly went out and bought all of his Gideon Oliver books. When Gideon was finished, I started his Chris N. books - and feel even deeper in love. Elkins truly knows how to write about art, and if you love art and art history the way I do, you'll abosultely love his book dealing with art fraud and the like. Few people can actually deal with mysteries surrounding art, because they skim the details or make reference to braodly popular pieces and artists which they know offhand. Not so with Elkins - he knows both the obscure and the popular, and he writes about art like someone who loves it and understands it. And...about the mystery? You'll like Chris as a character, and like all of Elkins mysteries, this one has plenty of plot twists and turns, and it keeps you guessing about who the culprit could be. That's a plus for any mystery, in my book.

For those of you who like Aaron Elkins' Gideon Oliver series, I urge you to try the Chris Norgren series.

Chris Norgren is an art historian/curator with an expertise in Old Masters. Someone is sponsoring a show of Old Masters that have been located after having been plundered by the Nazis. A colleague who was curating the show asks Chris to come to Germany as he thinks there is a fake within the collection. Unfortunately, he is killed in suspicious circumstances before he can reveal his thoughts. Chris must put the puzzle pieces together before the show can go on.

There are three books in the Chris Norgren series. All are enteraining, fun, art history romps. I wrote Aaron Elkins once and asked why he didn't continue the series. He says he would love to, but the publishers don't perceive it as being as marketable as the Gideon Oliver series. Until they relent, find this series as used books and in libraries and enjoy!

I love all the Chris Norgren books that Aaron Elkins has written. Pick up this book and I am sure you will agree with me that it is well worth your time. There are 3 books in this series and I wish Mr. Elkins would continue the series.

A US Army soldier finds three masterpiece paintings in an old salt mine near Saltzburg, Germany. A Titian, a Rubens, and a Vermeer. These treasures had been stolen from an Italian collector's palazzo in Florence in August 1944 by fleeing Nazis.
Enter Army Colonel Mark Robey. Let's have an art exhibition for the newly-found art, persuade Claudio Bolzano to loan other works, and provide some favorable press in Berlin for the U. S. Forces. And so Treasures of Four Centuries: The Plundered Past Recovered is launched.
Enter Chris Norgren. Chris is a curator at the San Francisco museum that has been awarded the oversight of The Plundered Past exhibition by the U. S. Defense Department. He's young, bored, and has a less-than-stellar degree in art history from San Jose State.
When the chief curator (and Chris' immediate supervisor), Peter Van Cortlandt, calls from Berlin requesting help with irregularities, Chris accepts assignment as deputy director of the exhibition and flies to Berlin.
After a brief discussion with Chris regarding a suspicious painting without naming the work in question, Van Cortlandt flies to Frankfurt to acquire an El Greco belonging to Bolzano for the Berlin exhibition. He is found murdered near a Frankfurt brothel.
As Chris tries to solve the mystery with the help of a grungy OSI Major, the reader is deluged with some fascinating facts and glimpses of the art world: such as the difficult procedures of mounting an exhibition and the steps of investigating a suspected forgery.
We follow Chris into the golden world of Florentine Cinquecento, discover methods of verification and authenticity of art, learn the vernacular--craquelure, pointelle, etc.
And we marvel at the architecture of Germany and Italy, have lunch at the Berlin Zoo and gourmet breakfast at a small hotel in Florence.
Elkins is the Edgar award-winning author of the Gideon Oliver novels. A DECEPTIVE CLARITY is the first of a trilogy of Chris Norgren art history mysteries. Published in 1987, it may have been before its time with the combination of mystery and art, but a current reading is highly recommended.

Enjoyed this book! The characters were hilarious! The plot was twisty & turny...which I like.
The "hero" very funny...and sweet. But the end was kinda...I don't want to say weak.
but sort of confusing and not very rational....But Hey...it's a story.

And Aaron Elkins is a wonderful story teller!

After reading Loot by the same author, I was ready for another art history mystery. I very rarely figure out what's going on in a mystery until it is revealed by the author, but this time I kept chafing at the bit for the art expert protagonist to realize what I had assumed very early on about the fake at the center of the story. Not to give away too much, I'll just say that it was obvious given the personality of the curator who is killed. Another thing that irked me about the book was its similarity to Loot - the scholar who becomes a man of action, malgré soi, the awkward start of the love relationship, the goons, etc. I did enjoy the art history and travelogue details however, and the sense that there is an intelligent, articulate writer behind this.

I enjoyed the writer and the story but the Kindle version of this book is full of spelling errors. Very unprofessional.