Theft, forgery, and little old ladies in Rome

Since the Sureshot fiance was off studying for his board exams today, I took the opportunity to squeeze another book into my schedule. This one's Iain Pears' Death and Restoration, one in his Jonathan Argyll/Flavia di Stefano series of art history mysteries. While the series hasn't received the same level of praise as Pears' An Instance of the Fingerpost (which happens to be excellent, BTW), they're more lighthearted and a pleasant way to spend a Saturday afternoon. Pears' "serious novels" certainly deserve the praise they get, but his work in this series is perhaps unfairly derided for not being of the same intellectual caliber. Personally, I rather appreciate a good author that can write "down-market" while still keeping the neat plots and excellent characterizations. I'd much rather read Pears' so-called lesser work than some of the fawned-over excuses for literature that too often dominate the best-seller lists.

Death and Restoration again follows our recently engaged art-theft-fighting duo embroiled in yet another unusual case. The Art Theft Squad has received a tip that the monastery of San Giovanni is due to be relieved of one of its art works. The tip seems dubious - there's not much of value in this monastery committed to poverty excepted an enormous (and thus difficult to make off with) painting attributed to Caravaggio. Add in the fact that said Carvaggio is currently under restoration and you've got the makings of a useless tip-off, but Flavia decides to check it out anyway. No sooner than Flavia begins to look into the matter, one of the fathers at the monastery is attacked and a small icon of the Virgin goes missing. The theft is confounding and the recent arrival of a known art thief (readers of the series will recognize an old friend here) in Rome sends Jonathan and Flavia deep into a new investigation. The mystery follows a variety of twists and turns as numerous suspects (the thief! the art restorer! the dealer!) are investigated and eliminated. As always, with Flavia's police work and Jonathan's research skills, the couple manages to unravel the mystery behind the icon and its disappearance.

Part of why I love this series is how Pears manages to craft his stories in such a way that even when the perpetrator is known, there's still more to the story. Rather than making the who the focus of his plots, Pears gets you thinking about the why also. Motive matters in a mystery, and Pears heads that axiom far better than most writers in the genre. He also avoids the common trap of not devoting enough time to the denouement of his story. The mystery doesn't slam to a halt when the villian is caught - we get to see how all the players in the story come together to set things right again, in so much as they're able. The decided lack of loose ends always makes a Pears book satisfying.

Definitely worth the time to read if you're interested in art history or Rome generally. I'd put this installment at 4 stars.