Mysteries Go Back to School for Campus Carnage

It's back-to-school time for campuses across the nation, and, frankly, there are few better settings for mystery plots than academia: ambitious academics; the corrupting influence of money; and the tangled relationships and pasts of young students. There were some good topical entries in the campus thriller category in 2019, starting with Dervia McTiernan's The Scholar, in which a woman found murdered on a college campus is identified as the heir to a fortune and the child of the university's biggest funder. There's also A Student of History by Nina Revoyr about a broke young student thrilled to land a research assistant gig with one of Los Angeles' ultra-rich, only to discover dark secrets that force him to decide how far he will go to protect his future. From 2018, there is Beth Gutcheon's The Affliction. At the troubled Rye Manor School for Girls, a former headmaster of a prestigious New York City private school is sent to assess the school’s problems only to find a teacher dead in the school’s swimming pool, a teacher with the "affliction" of nonstop chattering. From 2017 comes Ruth Ware's The Lying Game in which three former girl classmates at a remote boarding school near the English Channel receive a summoning text from the fourth member of their clique, drawing them back to her home near the school, where her father, the art teacher, was a formative influence on all of the women. The reunited friends soon revisit old secrets from their shared pastime, the lying game, in which they purposely fibbed to faculty and students to see what they could get away with. Finally, one of my faves for psychological chills, Tana French, offers 2014's The Secret Place in which her Dublin Murder Squad is called to a high school after an anonymous post claims to know who killed a popular boy the year before, drawing the detectives into a strange and dangerous underworld of teenage girls. For a broader compilation of examples, including top authors such as Dorothy Sayers, P.D. James, Amanda Cross and Donna Tartt, see https://crimereads.com/a-brief-history-of-academic-mysteries-campus-thrillers-and-research-noir/

When the Paintbrush Inspires the Pen

Along with readers across the nation, my book club is discussing The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel referencing the painting "The Goldfinch" by Carel Fabritius. The fictional tale has sparked new interest in the real painting, and I wonder what Fabritius would make of booming museum gift-store sales of tote bags featuring his trompe l'oeuil portrait of a little pet bird chained to its perch. Tartt's novel follows the "Dickensian" journey of the protagonist from his boyhood survival of a terrorist explosion in a museum, which killed his mother and left him in secret possession of a famous painting. Like many, I pondered why Tartt chose "The Goldfinch" as the fictionally purloined artwork out of all the other candidates. The painting's history certainly recommends it as a disaster survivor: It is one of the few surviving works of Fabritius, who was killed at just 32 in a massive gunpowder magazine explosion in 1654 Delft. Fabritius, a master of the 17th century Delft school along with Vermeer and de Hooch, has been praised for painterly illusion and originality, breaking from Rembrandt and Dutch conventions to favor light backgrounds, a cooler palette, delicate light effects and spatial illusion. The chained bird may or may not have symbolic significance: A goldfinch was not only a popular Dutch pet of the time but also a symbol in art for death, resurrection and the passion of Christ. For a good discussion of the work, see the Wall Street Journal article by art historian Mary Lewis. So I can think of many themes from the painting that make it an inspired choice: the trompe l'oeuil of fate and freedom; the soul tethered by a traumatic past, by guilt, by responsibility, by obsession; the fragility and transcendence of art; death and immortality. The intersection of visual and literary arts can create unique epiphanies, both universal and personal. So, of course, this is not the first work of art to inspire a fictional work. Remember the popularity, if not the prize quality, of Brown's The Da Vinci Code and Chevalier's Girl With a Pearl Earring? For some other examples, see http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2014/jan/17/fine-art-fiction-donna-tartt-goldfinch