The Burnt Orange Heresy by Charles Willeford

I closed the book, pushed it to one side, and then reached for Volume III. My fingers trembled - a little - as I lit a cigarette. I knew why I had lingered so long over the preschool child piece, even though I hated to admit it to myself. For a long time (I said to myself that I was only waiting to finish my cigarette first), I was physically unable to open the book to my article on Jacques Debierue. Every evil thing Dorian Gray did appeared on the face of his closeted portrait, but in my case, I wonder sometimes if there is a movie projector in a closet somewhere whirring away, showing the events of those two days of my life over and over. Evil, like everything else, should keep pace with the times, and I'm not a turn-of-the-century dilettante like Dorian Gray. I'm a professional, and as contemporary as the glaring Florida sun outside my window.

-The Burnt Orange Heresy

That excerpt is from the third page of The Burnt Orange Heresy, and it's what I'd call a heck of an opening. Three pages in, and we already know that narrator James Figueras has done something very bad indeed. As to the particulars - well, Charles Willeford knows how to keep those under wraps for a good long while.

In fact, as the novel wore on, I forgot that Figueras had made that Dorian Gray comparison. He's cold and ambitious, certainly; an art critic who's hungry for prestige. He takes an opportunity to make what could be a career-making connection with a legendarily reclusive artist - of course, it comes with a catch. And that catch leads him down, down, down...

I hate to say too much about this one. Naturally, if you're not wild about noir or suspense, it's not going to be the book for you. But for anyone who might be interested, I think the less said, the better. And it's not even so much that it's a mystery - not in the usual whodunit? way. It's more of a window into the mind of a criminal - perhaps more comparable to the aforementioned Picture of Dorian Gray, as well as psychological portraits of guilt like Crime and Punishment and The Secret History. Much slighter, I must say - my copy is only 140 pages.

I did want to mention, however, that in addition to crafting a nifty bit of suspense, Willeford is also an artist himself - it shows. I'm an avid museum-goer (and former Art History student), so I appreciated that Figueras rang true in that regard. I also enjoyed that, after launching into a particularly lengthy critical reflection, Figueras eventually noticed that his listener had fallen asleep. Not everyone loves Dada, it seems.

Up next: I finished The Burnt Orange Heresy a couple of days ago, so I'm actually quite close to wrapping up The Blood-Dimmed Tide, another mystery. (Lovely title, I know. It's actually Yeats, as it turns out. Who knew?)