Murder and Chess

The Flanders Panel by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

I discovered Pérez-Reverte around 1990 and this book was the first of his that I read. I must certainly have enjoyed it because I followed it with The Dumas Club, The Fencing Master and The Seville Communion. Most recently I enjoyed Two Fine Men. So my loyalty to his work confirms that I think he writes well.

Sadly, this second reading of The Flanders Panel was disappointing at the level of storyline. The background story, that the woman restoring a XV^th century Dutch painting uncovers that the artist was sending a hidden message about a contemporary murder, was very well thought out and described. The message is concealed in a chess game being played out in the panel and he constructs a modern intrigue which parallels the line of play. Although a fun idea, this held much less attraction for me with clichéd characters, an implausible plot and a facile denouement.

Curiously several of the little epigrams that head up each chapter are drawn from books I have loved, notably Godel, Escher, Bach. It was easy to see that some of the philosophical thinking in his plot was based on ideas he’d absorbed from these books.

You won’t go wrong reading him, but try instead The Dumas Club which I think was more sure-footed and was in fact filmed as The Ninth Gate starring Johnny Depp.