Smart, complex and insightful, this debut literary thriller works at several levels: as an intriguing murder mystery, an examination of the seamy underside of the art world and a study of the biographer's craft. The murder mystery dominates in the early going when biographer Nick Greer learns that a crucial missing source, Jacob Grossman, is alive and in Manhattan, but Grossman is killed shortly after Greer visits him and tapes his final interview. Grossman's untimely death hinders Greer in his efforts to track down a lost painting called the Incarnation
that was the penultimate work of his subject, a controversial artist named Frank Spira who was romantically linked to Grossman. The murder also places Greer squarely in the bull's-eye of the NYPD as a suspect, but Greer's first interrogator at the crime scene turns out to be a phony cop whom Greer later dubs "the collector" when he learns that the mystery man is killing off Spira's friends and lovers. The artistic angle gets more complicated when Greer is approached by a mobster named Tony Reardon, thought to be dead, who helped finance Spira's art career. The kingpin sends Greer off to Tangiers to hunt down Spira's painting, but the trip turns into a disaster; Reardon is murdered and the writer nearly gets killed. Geary's tight, multilayered plot is a work of art in its own right, and Greer's tortured efforts to finish the biography as his deadline looms and another book about Spira is in the works adds an extra element of suspense. The command and assurance of Geary's prose is impressive, and his sophisticated treatment of the fraught process of biography writing gives the novel depth and substance. (June 17)
