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'Take No More' plays out in London and in Florence, Italy, and is a thriller set against double dealing and corruption in the art world.
Much of the background is fact-based. Classical sixteenth century painting masterpieces like Michelangelo's 'Leda and the Swan', Botticelli's 'Portrait of Cosimo Di Medici' or Raphael's 'Portrait of a Young Man' are missing, believed lost or destroyed. The recovery of any one of them would raise fifty million or more. When modern day conservators look at paintings using the latest imaging techniques, they regularly discover beneath the surface the early versions of the work made by the artist as the work was being developed. And occasionally they find something else - a wholly new painting from an earlier period under a more recently painted picture - an underpainting.
In 'Take No More', Julia Blake is a conservator, working with classic paintings. Her expertise includes imaging beneath the surface of paintings to discover what lies beneath. She is sure that a number of those valuable paintings described as 'missing, believed lost or destroyed' have in fact been overpainted as a means of hiding them and preventing their being destroyed when the moral edicts of the past deemed them unsuitable. She has tracked down a collection of pictures in Florence that looks promising and has gone there to use the new imaging techniques to try to discover a hidden masterpiece and make her reputation.
'Take No More' begins when James Blake, Julia's husband, returns to their home in London to find that she has been shot and killed. What had brought her back to London unannounced? Why had someone killed her?
Blake determines to find her killers no matter what. He has little to go on - just her last message to him sent from her mobile phone: 'help me' with an attachment showing Michelangelo's 'Leda and the Swan'. There is no help from the police as he is impeded by the unsympathetic Inspector Hendricks who suspects him of the murder.
Alongside the development of Blake's search for the truth about the killing of Julia - as he follows in her footsteps to the criminal underworld in Florence - the novel develops a number of deeper themes.
The first concerns fathers and sons. Blake himself and Matteo Lando, one of criminals he is forced to confront, share a similar troubled relationship with their fathers. The child is the father to the man. But how far can the father determine the future of the child?
Another theme that emerges is that of the legitimacy of violence. If violence is used to achieve a good end that could not be achieved by any other means, can this be justified? There are parallels here with Clint Eastwood's 'Unforgiven'.
A third theme concerns the quest for beauty in a corrupting world. There is the beauty of Emelia, one of the victims of the seedy underworld in Florence. There is the beauty of Michelangelo's 'Leda and the Swan', the painting that takes on an increasing importance as the story progresses. How far does the desire to capture beauty degrade and destroy it?
And finally, the issue of mortality. How self-defeating is the impulse in powerful men and women to try to immortalise themselves through art?
Sounds heavy?
It's not. These themes sit comfortably beneath the surface where, in the main development of the plot, Blake faces a dilemma worthy of Harlan Coben that unfolds with page turning intensity.
The plot twists are intriguing. The resolution is necessary. As Raymond Chandler once said: 'At least half the mystery novels published violate the law that the solution, once revealed, must seem to be inevitable.'
There is no danger of that here.
A recommended read.
Star rating: *****
Sample the first seven chapters:
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