Geary,
Joseph. Spiral. Pantheon. June 2003. c368p. ISBN 0-375-42223-4.
$24.95. Fiction.
This is an intricate and cleverly plotted
descent into the nether regions of the art world of the 1950s
and 1960s, a story in which the words mercury, tattoo, syphilis,
Incarnation, and coiled spiral are clues to a series of bizarre
paintings and disturbing events in the life of a deceased painter
named Frank Spira. His biographer, Nick Greer, is about to
go over the proofs of his long-awaited book when he learns
that two of Spira’s lovers, Jacob Grossman and Tony Reardon,
supposedly dead for 26 years, have turned up alive. Nick interviews
Grossman, a paranoid wretch who thinks that Nick has tracked
him down to find Incarnation, rumored to be Spira’s greatest
painting but thought to have been destroyed by the artist in
Tangier in 1957. When Grossman’s mutilated body is found
the next day, Nick becomes a suspect, and he realizes that
he needs to know what happened in Tangier, a search that turns
into a dangerous obsession as he confronts an equally obsessed
anonymous art collector. This well-crafted literary thriller
is recommended for larger public libraries. [Although the publisher
calls this a debut, Geary has also co-written four thrillers
under the pseudonym Patrick Lynch.]