Essay - Fiction Book Review: the Flanders Panel by Arturo Perez-reverte (Harcourt...

fiction

Book Review:

***** Flanders Panel by Arturo Perez-Reverte (Harcourt Reprint, 2004)

The mystery novel The Flanders ***** is set in the contemporary art world. Its main protagonist is an ***** restorer and amateur detective, determined to solve a murder that occurred centuries ago. While cleaning "***** Game of Chess" by Flemish Van Huys, Julia finds strange, painted-over Latin inscription on the 15th century Flemish painting, asking, 'who killed the knight,' i.e. 'quis necavit equitem.' "Only then did she realize that her work on 'The ***** of Chess' would be far from routine" (1) The ***** depicts Duke of Flanders playing chess, and the image seems to hold clues to a murder c*****ducted around ***** time of its composition, that of Roger de Arras. Interpreting the iconography and messages em*****dded in the painting she speculates: "AR would be exactly right for the abbreviation of Arras. And ***** de Arras appears in all the chronicles of the *****" (20).

Julia begins ***** read more ***** more about Arras, ***** circumstances ***** spawned the composition of the painting, and ***** to feel as if the characters in the ***** are familiar to ***** as her own fr*****nds in Madrid, Spa*****, where ***** mystery is set. However, the authorities at the Prado museum, which charged Julia ***** restore ***** work, seem uninterested in her finding beyond the word's sign*****icance to art, and they merely w*****h Julia to continue her restorative work on the same level of quality as always.

Looking for fur*****r information and aid that cannot be provided by texts alone, Julia first turns to her old guardian, Cesar, a cultivated, gay, gin-sipping ***** dealer, ********** knows a gre*****t deal ***** art, but has very little inclination towards learning about chess. Still, ***** both agree that "the key [to Arras' *****] does lie in the chess game," noting that in Latin '*****' means 'took' as well as 'killed'" (52). However, the 500-year old murder begins to take on added significance when Julia's caddish ex-boyfriend Alvaro dies, app*****ntly murdered, after she asks him ***** the meaning of the *****, and his interpretati***** of the depicted ***** game—and mysterious woman lurking in the picture.

Julia ***** some assistance in her quest to solve the apparently unsolvable age-old murder (and ***** apparently linked contemporary murder) ***** a clerk n*****med Munoz, who is as passionate about the game of chess as Julia is ***** art. He is also just as ruthlessly *****ocial as Julia is sympathetic—he ch*****enges Cesar, ***** asks him why chess is an interesting ***** with the words that he plays chess for the same reason that Cesar ***** a homosexual (70). Yet Munoz proves helpful ***** the ***** because he uses what he calls retrograde analysis to reconstruct ***** c*****ss game being played in the painting by a knight and ***** royal patron who may also have been ***** *****er. Although presented as a rat***** scrawny, undeveloped, geeky sort of individual—he is described at one point as looking like a wet dog—Munoz begins