The Flanders Panel

Rating:
Summary: A Good Introduction to Perez-Reverte
Review: This is the first book I have read by Arturo Perez-Reverte, and while I can certainly understand the criticisms I have read here, I still enjoyed it. Someone described this story as quirky, and I agree.

This is not a very long book, and there is no telling what might have been lost in the English translation, but I felt that the characters had become real enough, and that the story moved along quite well. I would have liked to learn more about the relationship between Julia and Cesar, and I think the story would have benefited if it had been drawn out a littler further, but overall I found it to be an entertaining piece of fiction with undertones that required some thought. If anything, The Flanders Panel makes me want to read more from Perez-Reverte. Judging by some of the reviews I've read on these pages, it seems as if his books will only get better.


Rating:
Summary: Interesting Premise
Review: In modern Madrid, Julia the art restorer prepares a Flemish masterpiece for auction. The painting depicts two men playing chess, watched by a woman in black. But beneath the varnish lies a hidden message alluding to the centuries'-old murder of one of the chess players. Julia brings historians and chess experts into the mix trying to unravel the old mystery, but sets off a new round of murders and thefts. It's an interesting plot device, that the real chess game depicted in a classic painting would yield clues to both the old and the new murders. Perez-Reverte is a good writer, though he tends to over-write by repeating the same idea three or four times in a paragraph or explaining at length what is blindingly obvious. Other reviewers have noted that the chess game itself is not expert-level and that it makes the plot drag a bit. Fair enough. Readers who played chess in high school will be able to follow the game.

One quibble: even though the painting and the artist in question are fictional, it would have been useful to have a reproduction of whatever painting the author referred to as he wrote the book. Maybe a reproduction on the cover. It's a fun book, an easy read. A definite cut above the typical mystery dreck available these days.


Rating:
Summary: A deadly game of chess.
Review: Arturo Perez-Reverte's mystery, "The Flanders Panel," takes place in Madrid and was translated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa. It deals with a mysterious work of art, "The Game of Chess," that was painted by a Flemish artist, Pieter Van Huys, in 1471. Julia, an art expert who has been restoring this painting prior to its being auctioned off, suddenly unearths a message hidden in the painting. The message, "Quis necavit equitem?" is Latin for "Who killed the knight?" It prompts intense speculation as to why the painter first included this message in his painting and later painted over it.

It turns out that the game of chess depicted in the painting provides clues to the meaning of the message, which relates to matters of political intrigue in the fifteenth century. Suddenly, the intrigue reaches into the present when a noted art historian is found dead under mysterious circumstances. It soon becomes apparent that the murderer is an individual with a macabre sense of humor and a thorough knowledge of chess.

I was disappointed in "The Flanders Panel." The characters, including Cesar, who is Julia's surrogate father, Menchu, Julia's best friend and the owner of an art gallery, and Senor Munoz, a chess expert, are all rather flat and uninteresting. The book is talky and plodding, the plot is too complicated, and the references to chess are incomprehensible to a non-player. The sole aspect of the book that interested me was the history of the painting and the meaning of the hidden message. It is unfortunate that the rest of the novel lacks enough plausibility, suspense, and excitement to make "The Flanders Panel" an entertaining mystery.