This was one book that I couldn’t wait to read. Like many people I was gripped by her previous book, “The historian”. This supernatural mystery centres on a modern day hunt for Dracula. The slow, build up of suspense is exquisite. If you love mysteries with a touch of the supernatural and haven’t read this, do so now.Art and psychiatry form the basis of the mystery in “The swan thieves”. Robert Oliver, a talented artist is arrested for attacking a painting in the National gallery and has lost the ability to speak. He is sent to a psychiatric facility and placed in the care of the psychiatrist Andrew Marlowe. Marlowe is an artist himself and is fascinated, then obsessed by the talented Oliver and the secret that compelled him to damage a work of art. Overstepping professional boundaries he looks into the life of Robert Oliver and becomes embroiled in the torment of Oliver and the people he loved. He also discovers a second mystery. Who is the mysterious woman that Oliver was compelled to paint over and over again to the detriment of his marriage and health.
Like her other novel the mystery unfolds slowly. Her beautiful prose draws you in and expresses the ethereal nature of art, the artist and the gradual loss of a persons mind to obsession. At the same time the characters and their problems are very real and engaging. My heart broke for Robert’s wife as she described the pain of her marriage break up.
I have to admit that towards the end of this novel my attention did waver and for once I guessed the secret of the mysterious painted woman but on the whole it was a well above average mystery.
The book also contains a lot of detail about impressionist paintings so to stop you going crazy trying to imagine the works of art make sure you also check out one of our books on impressionism.
This is recommended for anybody who enjoyed Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s “The shadow of the wind”.
- Kaye
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