A young woman is found murdered...and the clues to her death point to her spurned lover, Paul Cézanne.
In this richly atmospheric novel, a mysterious young woman named Solange Vernet arrives in Aix-en-Provence with her lover, a Darwinian scholar named Charles Westbury, and a year later is found strangled in a quarry outside the city. The young and inexperienced magistrate, Bernard Martin, finds his investigation caught in the crossfires of a raging cultural debate. Many of the more conservative residents of Aix, including Martin's own police investigator, believe that Solange reaped what she sowed for entertaining such radical scientific theories.
Initially assuming that Solange's murder was a simple crime de passion by either a spurned Cézanne or a betrayed Westbury, Bernard soon finds himself on a mission to unravel the secrets of Solange and Cezanne's hidden past—the key to which may be a series of his paintings which depict the strangulation and violation of a woman with golden-red hair.
Exploring questions of science and religion—and the role of women in these realms—that persist even today, Cézanne's Quarry is an impressive debut mystery about life, death, love, and art.
From Publishers Weekly
Could Paul Cézanne be a killer? That's one of the disturbing prospects confronting novice magistrate Bernard Martin in August 1885 as he starts to investigate the murder of Solange Vernet, a recent transplant from Paris whose brutalized remains are discovered near a favorite haunt of the painter's outside Aix, in Pope's provocative debut. Was the freethinking beauty with the flame-colored locks slain by her lover, self-professed Darwinian scholar—and likely scam artist—Charles Westerbury, as Martin's boss contends, or by a smitten Cézanne? Martin quickly recognizes that the case could be a career maker—or breaker—if he antagonizes the artist's powerful family without overwhelming evidence. Pope animates her canvas with plenty of vivid period detail, but subplots, romantic and otherwise, dilute the suspense; later she telegraphs what should have been a surprise ending. Still, Francophiles and history buffs will find much to like. (June)
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From Booklist
In fewer than 400 pages, first-time novelist Pope skillfully explores the subjugation and abuse of women in the nineteenth century; the injustices of the French legal system; the conflict between Darwinian philosophy and established religious belief; and Cézanne′s art, love life, and depressed personality. She also weaves a fascinating murder mystery into these diverse thematic threads, forming an intriguing portrait of the painter′s life in Provence and how others might have perceived him. A body is found in a quarry near Aix—the lovely Solange Vernet, object of Cézanne′s unrequited love and the paramour of Darwinian scholar Charles Westbury. Unfortunately, the summer holiday leaves only a skeleton law-enforcement crew in place, among them the inexperienced, timid magistrate Bernard Martin and his callous detective assistant, Franc, who unceremoniously hauls in Westbury and Cézanne for questioning. Both investigators believe this crime of passion points to a lover spurned—but which one? With a bleak view of humanity similar to Émile Zola′s, this story of tortured love and repressed violence resembles Iain Pears at his darkest and Arturo Pérez-Reverte′s The Flanders Panel (1994) in tone and thematic depth. --Jen Baker