Cezanne's Quarry

✍ Scribed by Pope, Barbara

• Book ID: 109213752
• Publisher: Pegasus
• Year: 2008
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 182 KB
• Series: Bernard Martin 1
• Category: Fiction
• ISBN-13: 9781453217917

✦ Synopsis

A young woman is found murdered...and the clues to her death point to her spurned lover, Paul C?zanne. Could Paul C?zanne 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 C?zanne? 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.