Fred Taylor Art Mystery series by Nicholas Kilmer (#1-#2, #6-#8)
Requirements: Epub reader, 2.78 Mb
Overview: Teacher of art and Latin in Vienna, VA, 1960-62; Action for Boston Community Development, Boston, MA, writer in department of planning and evaluation, 1966-67; English teacher at private school in Beverly, MA, 1967-70; Swain School of Design, New Bedford, MA, associate professor of liberal arts, 1970-82, dean, 1979-82; affiliated with Art Research of Cambridge, Cambridge, MA, 1984-88; founder of Nicholas Kilmer Fine Art, 1988—. Painter, with exhibitions throughout the Northeast.
Genre: Mystery
1. Harmony in Flesh and Black
Nicholas Kilmer’s Harmony in Flesh and Black exposes a deep knowledge of the sometimes tricky and treacherous haut monde of art dealers, collectors, and curators. Smartly tailored, well-to-do Beacon Hill collector Clayton Reed has habits so refined that he doesn’t even venture out to pick up his own acquisitions. He leaves that sort of work to Fred Taylor, a veteran of clandestine action in Southeast Asia who is presently working as Reed’s factotum. A passionate noncollector, Fred researches possible purchases and fights for them at auction–but he is really more interested in his blossoming relationship with Molly Riley, an independent-minded Cambridge librarian.
In this series debut, Reed suspects that there may be a Vermeer painting worth millions lying underneath the oils of an unexciting nineteenth-century landscape. Tension mounts as he and Fred try to keep the vultures away and their hunch to themselves before auction. Meanwhile, Reed buys an unsigned nude smacking of 1890s Paris–it could be a Whistler, something he might have titled Harmony in Flesh and Black–from a down-and-out porno photographer who is soon afterward found murdered on the floor of his filthy studio. Their success depends on keeping a low profile, but now Clayton and Fred are in danger of being implicated in a very sleazy crime–which may at best jeopardize their plans to get the Vermeer, and at worst put their lives in danger.
2. Man With A Squirrel
Cambridge art expert Fred Taylor, consultant to a rich and omnivorous Beacon Hill collector, is disturbed by discovering that the harmless old gent who’d been haunting Fred’s strongminded lover, librarian Molly Riley, lies dead on the banks of the Charles. Soon Fred’s distracted by a second find, a fragment of a painting. It lies in antique dealer Oona Imry’s shop. Fred feels in his gut that the piece of canvas, handsomely portraying a squirrel at a man’s feet, might be by John Singleton Copley.
His boss, Clayton Reed, charms Oona into selling him the squirrel, then sends legman Fred out to look for the rest of the painting. A new fragment shortly arrives from the hands of Oona’s nephew, gratis, after Oona dies under a train. Are the canvases tied to her murder and that of Molly’s stalker? Is Fred on some kind of killer treasure hunt?
6. Madonna of the Apes
Fred Taylor, a veteran of unspecified clandestine services that have caused him to spend hard times in Southeast Asia, finds himself at loose ends in Boston. A late-night chance encounter in the city’s Beacon Hill area throws his lot in with eccentric art collector Clayton Reed. Reed has been tricked by a young man as unscrupulous as he is ignorant into examining and considering for purchase a collection of paintings whose presence in the U.S. seems, at best, informal.
Fred, sensing Reed’s naivete in matters of personal security, volunteers to guarantee that security. At the same time, Reed’s acumen as a connoisseur astounds Fred. How could Reed just walk away from the situation with what he later gloatingly describes as “a prize worth more than the gross domestic product of Bulgaria?”
What Reed has purchased appears to be a painting by one of the most important artists of the Italian Renaissance. But is it what it seems? Can The Madonna of the Apes be a forgery? How did it come to be, so quietly, in Boston? These questions propel Reed and Fred into an increasingly murderous tangle, guided only by the assurances of a sequence of art dealers who lie as easily as they withhold the truth about the painting, its true nature, and its history.
7. A Butterfly in Flame
Stillton Academy on the coast north of Boston is in trouble. The academy’s days are numbered unless extraordinary help arrives. Worse, a Stillton instructor has purportedly dis-appeared with a female first-year student, daughter of the Academy’s only significant donor. Two of the trustees travel to Boston where they ask wealthy, intensely secretive art collector Clayton Reed for the services of his employee, Fred Taylor. Fred goes undercover as a member of the faculty and soon discovers conflicting motives and designs among faculty and students, as well as a board of trustees whose interest in the long-term survival of the operation seems lazy, misguided or-perhaps-a good deal more sinister. Meanwhile, the motives of Taylor’s employer remain obscure. What is it that whets his acute acquisitive instincts? He will only say, "Trust no one. Look at everything." In sleepy Stillton, a town suspiciously backward, un-exploited, and ripe for development, what hidden treasure is Clayton hoping for? And can Fred find it before the college goes up in flames?
8. A Paradise for Fools
The young woman in the hair salon raises her shirt to show a friend a work in progress—a riot of stunning tattoos. From the barber’s chair, Fred Taylor knows that those images—weird insects, beasts, and naked human figures—could only come from something amazing: a hitherto unknown painting of rare and significant value. And the girls don’t have a clue.
Fred knows such a painting needs to be found. His inquiries lead him from the salon to the illegal tattoo parlor of an unlicensed genius. Everyone who must have seen the painting denies that it exists, despite the vivid proof increasingly laid bare on the canvas of the hairdresser’s skin.
Fred’s employer, the collector Clayton Reed, is out of the country. So Fred, left to his own devices, is free to follow the trail, despite the distractions presented by the intriguing librarian Molly Riley.
Fred must proceed with caution. Then he encounters the first serious bump in the road: a suspiciously convenient hit-and-run that brings one potential informant to an abrupt dead end. A must-read for all Michael Connelly fans—read it to see why.
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