THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 1, 1996 TAG: 9609030215
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J3 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY KATE MELHUISH
LENGTH: 63 lines
MURDER AT THE NATIONAL GALLERY
MARGARET TRUMAN
Random House. 340 pp. $24.
The National Gallery of Art - ``America's Museum'' - serves as vivid backdrop for the latest intriguing mystery featuring Annabel Reed-Smith and her husband Mac. Author Margaret Truman has written 12 previous Capitol Crimes novels. Murder at the National Gallery is the latest.
This series, plus the former First Daughter's biographies of her mother and father and her recently published First Ladies, establish Truman's credentials as a Beltway insider with no reason to hide behind an ``Anonymous'' pseudonym.
Truman mixes plenty of local color into her work; her characters take on distinct overtones of the real-life figures they represent. In Murder at the National Gallery Truman superimposes the swirling world of international art over Washington's political scene much as an artist layers paint on canvas.
National Gallery senior curator Luther Mason is arguably the world's foremost authority on the controversial life and works of Michelangelo Merisi Caravaggio, the great 16th century Italian painter. Mason's career is about to reach its peak with an exhibition of these works in the Gallery's West Building.
Truman provides a guided tour of this momentous undertaking: delicate negotiations between the Gallery and officials of foreign governments and museums have been underway for many months, and the story begins just half a year before the gala exhibition opening. As time grows shorter and preparations for the show more intense, the details emerge for an elaborate plan to steal a little-known but dazzling painting by the Master.
Throughout the mystery, acting almost as docent to the reader, is Annabel Reed-Smith, a former attorney whose passion for pre-Columbian art has led to her ownership of an art gallery instead of a law practice.
As unofficial go-between for the White House and the National Gallery, Annabel uses her doubly specialized knowledge both in the staging of the Caravaggio exhibition and in clearing up the opacity that surrounds his ``lost'' masterpiece.
Law professor Mackensie Smith appears as only an occasional daub in this story. He does accompany his wife on her final excursion to Italy, where the last brushstrokes are put to the solution of the murder. While there, Mac gets to take some particularly satisfying action against the cartoonish host of a weekly public television arts show.
Truman sketches in the contemporary underworld of Italian art with a parti-colored assortment of criminals that includes a crooked cultural attache, a defrocked priest and mobsters on two continents.
Though one malefactor after another is rubbed out, this is not the paint-by-numbers formula writing so common of the genre. Truman approaches her subject with the deft touch of an artist, skillfully blending the D.C. arts and political communities.
Truman richly depicts Caravaggio's paintings, but it's especially illuminating to read the novel side by side with a volume of color plates of his works. (Check the library for Caravaggio, written by Alfred Moir and published in 1989 by Harry N. Abrams.) Having the pictures to pore over as would a member of the exhibition committee at the National Gallery gives a ``hands-on'' dimension to the mystery. MEMO: Kate Melhish is a former book-seller who lives in Norfolk. by CNB