The Fine Art of Murder

November 30, 2015
Retired police chief Katherine Sullivan, the narrator of Barnes’s disappointing first novel, travels from Taos, N.Mex., to her hometown of Edina, Minn., to visit her lawyer daughter, Lizzie, who’s getting divorced, and her grandchildren. At the Pierce Art Gallery, Katherine meets staff member Stacey Jordan and wealthy owner Randolph Pierce, picking up on tension between them. Soon Stacey is killed, the police are eyeing Randolph as the prime suspect, and Katherine is perturbed to learn that Lizzie is more than Randolph’s lawyer. Katherine, her old friend Nathan Walker, and the eccentric employees of his security firm team up to solve the murder, looking at those connected to the Pierce estate and mysterious large deposits to Stacey’s bank account. Poor construction, gaps in logic, an emphasis on conversation rather than actual detection, a thin array of suspects, and a failure to deliver adequately on the premise amount to a less than satisfying read.