Perspectives

Peta's Review 

The setting is Florence,1557. The painter, Jacopo Pontormo, is found dead in the church of San Lorenzo. A hammer is found next to the body and a chisel has pierced his chest.
Who killed Jacopo? And why has someone painted over a section of his unfinished frescos? Enter the main players Cosimo de Medici I (Duke of Florence), his wife Eleanor, his daughter Maria, their page boy Malatesta, and a host of other characters: Giorgio Vasario, Benvenuto Cellini, Catherine (Queen of France), the exiled Michelangelo, Jacopo’s apprentice Bronzino and colour grinder Marco, as well as two nuns on the run: Sister Plautilla and Sister Catherine.

The result is, to quote The Guardian review, “a dazzling Renaissance romp.” An Agatha Christie meets Dan Brown. From the first to the last page, I was there in Florence on the Hercule Poirot vanguard to uncover Jacopo’s killer. Along the way more mystery, intrigue and scandal are revealed, secret passages are uncovered and pornographic images are unveiled. Like all good crime dramas, the story ends with resolution, an exegesis, the players exiting stage left, the lights going down and the curtain closing. Utterly satisfying.

Perspectives is an epistolary novel, so the point of view is constantly changing. It is up to the reader to keep up, because the letters pile up at a breakneck pace. The novel’s title signals the importance in both art and life of the angle or viewpoint from which we observe experience. In art, perspective is the technique used by painters to represent a three-dimensional space or object within a two-dimensional frame; it allows the artist to create an illusion of something which is not real, just as a letter can create a perspective, or an illusion of truth.

Perspectives, a historical novel, is very much a departure from two of Binet’s previous novels, HHhH and Civilisations, both of which are highly cerebral and set in contemporary times. You get the feeling that Binet really enjoyed writing this new thriller. Published originally in French, Perspectives is superbly translated by Sam Taylor. This is a novel bristling with fascinating characters and entertaining antics. It will satisfy lovers of both art and crime fiction, and anyone who enjoys a well-written, rollicking narrative. Highly recommended. 

Publisher's Review 

A brilliant reinvention of the detective novel, set in Renaissance Florence and packed with art, scandal, murder and scheming - from the author of the international bestseller HHhH.

Florence, New Year's Day 1557. As dawn breaks, a painter is discovered lying on the floor of a church, stabbed through the heart.

Above him, the paintings he laboured over for more than a decade. At his home, a hidden painting scandalously depicting Maria de Medici, daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Florence, as a naked Venus. Who is the murderer? Who is behind the painting? As the city erupts in chaos, Giorgio Vasari, the great art historian, is picked to lead the investigation.

Letters fly back and forth carrying news of political plots and speculation about the killer's identity - between Maria and her aunt Catherine de' Medici, the queen of France; between Catherine and her scheming agents in Florence; and between Vasari and his friend Michelangelo. Meanwhile, the Pope is banning books and branding works of art immoral. And the truth, when it comes to light, is as shocking as the bold new artworks that have made Florence the red-hot centre of Europe.

Bursting with characters and colour, Perspectives is a mystery like no other that shows us Renaissance Florence as we've never seen it before - a dazzling, hugely entertaining novel of court machinations, murder and art.