An Exquisite Corpse
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
Murder is a work of art…
When the acclaimed Cuban painter Wifredo Lam turns up dead in his Greenwich Village studio, officers Juanita Diaz and Brian Fitzgerald of the NYPD, must investigate the crime. But what they find is much more gruesome than they ever could have imagined.
Suspicion soon falls on a tight-knit circle of Surrealist refugees who fled Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II, and Diaz and Fitzgerald must traverse the city, from Chinatown's underworld to Spanish Harlem's gangland, to find the truth. Did one of the artists' bizarre parlor games turn deadly? Or is there something even more sinister afoot?
"Smart, witty, filled with so much history of the period, beautifully written, and suspenseful."—Jonathan Santlofer, author of The Death Artist
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set in 1943 New York City, this intriguing if uneven first in a trilogy from art historian Harrison (Such Desperate Joy: Imagining Jackson Pollack) focuses on the fictional murder of Afro-Cuban Chinese artist Wilfredo Lam, a surrealist who actually died in Paris in 1982. Lam's body is staged in his Greenwich Village apartment according to the principles of a surrealist party game called Exquisite Corpse, which points the finger at members of the art community, but are they being framed? The cops are stumped as they dig into Lam's complex heritage to solve the mystery. The cast includes such real-life figures as Peggy Guggenheim and Lee Krasner, but the sheer number of characters can make the story difficult to follow. As a result, original characters like Cuban American police officer Juanita Diaz are underserved as the novel takes the reader on a twisty ride through various New York immigrant communities. Harrison is at her best depicting the New York art world at a precarious time and its dependence on wealthy patrons for survival. That alone is worth the price of admission.
