Larry Maness’s latest work of detective fiction is also a speculative work of fiction concerning the early 1990s robbery at the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum. The Hull, Massachusetts-based author applies not only his literary skills to building a plot and fleshing it out with three dimensional characters, he uses his mystery novel experience to develop a considerable theory on why the paintings were stolen, how they were moved to a location overseas, and why there is no longer any trail available to retrieve the lost works of art. The Perfect Crime – Unmasking the Isabella Stewart Gardner Heist is an involving read that leads it reader through its story as the clues lead it protagonist to the truth.
Former Boston police officer Theo Perdoux, who has reinvented himself as a recovery agent for lost or stolen artwork, gets his assignment from a top administrator at Isabella Gardner Stewart museum. The administrator informs Perdoux that an expert violin maker and his assistant had been invited to the museum from Italy to examine a guitar featured at the museum. The Stewart head believes there is a connection between this violin maker and the robbery. He and his assistant may have been casing the museum for the robbery which occurred soon after their visit.
From there, Perdoux’s quixotic mission leads him through to the Boston underworld, an old, wealthy family of violin makers in Italy, an art forger, a shipping company, and a whole host of tough, dangerous underworld figures. Maness also masterfully works in a handful of amateurs, underachievers, people of mid level ability, and some directionless losers. It is through the temporary usefulness of such people that the more diabolical plotters make their presence felt and how such people became useful pawns in a game way beyond their league.
Perdoux ‘s dogged persistence is an authentic catalyst driving his case and the story’s plot toward a collision course with a daunting, unpleasant truth. While Perdoux manages to hold his own against Italy’s police authorities, matching muscle and wits with Italy’s underworld, he learns that some mysteries, especially those hidden within another mystery, often no longer offer leads, evidence, or trails. Yet, the unpleasant resolution took a lot of action packed leg work to arrive
The motivations of underworld characters as well as the motivations of a precious old and prestigious Italian family are carefully developed. Maness depicts a tale of a family’s self-deception as well as he develops a criminal’s tactics and an organized crime leader’s hubris and systematic deception.
The other involving feature to this novel is the labyrinths of leads that take the protagonist and reader through an ever changing kaleidoscope of possible angles. Perdoux, as developed by Maness, has the rangy intellect, the experience, and the patient and sometimes no so patient persistence to press on. As the who done it moves toward conclusion, Maness has painted a world in which old, respectable families, art enthusiasts, police officials on both sides of the Atlantic can be just as cynical, if not actually as corrupt, as organized crime leaders.
It is this cold, hard look at the reality of human beings, the lives they lead, that makes for an interesting second narrative in this novel. Only in such a corruptible world can such a caper have been carried out. Conversely, Maness describes in fine details the hand crafted beauty of the physical world, whether it be Boston’s bars and restaurants or historic areas of Rome, Italy. This novel constantly reminds us that the unscrupulous who people these wonders of architecture set in fine places are broken, pitiable, and loathsome. Descriptions of Rome may inspire a visit or return visit. The bluster of cobblestone streets, parked Vespas, the Compo di Fiori open air market, the stone monument of a 17th century heretic, and a sweep of cafes make the reader feel present in the city.
The mystery of who was involved and how it was engineered is eventually revealed. It is the mystery left dangling that provides insight into the frailty of human weakness and ever endless frustration created by the criminals who share our world.
The Pefect Crime – Unmasking the Isabella Stewart Gardner Heist is published by SpeakingVolumes.
www.SpeakingVolumes.us
