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Like An Instance of the Fingerpost, Iain Pears's Death and Restoration is grounded in a richly cultured vision rife with references to European history, art, and cuisine. And, though it represents the sixth novel in Pears's Jonathan Argyll series, the author subtly informs new readers of the key relationships and the past histories of his characters within the first three chapters. Once again, Argyll and his soon-to-be wife, Flavia di Stefano, are enmeshed in the Italian art world: Flavia, as a member of the Rome police's art squad and Argyll as a professor of art history.
The suspense of the novel is sustained by the careful revelation of the central art-theft plot; in turn, each major character becomes the narrative center and offers an expanded understanding of the events at San Giovanni. While Argyll is troubled over his fiancée's frequent absences just prior to their wedding, Flavia feels compelled to keep odd hours. She's certain that her old nemesis, Mary Verney, has returned to Rome with the intention of committing a major new theft. And Verney, readers soon learn, is herself in jeopardy. She must steal a Madonna icon from the monastery--despite the close scrutiny she faces from the Rome police force--because the sadistic Mikis Charanis has kidnapped Verney's granddaughter, 8-year-old Louise, and he will only release the child when Verney has acquired the artifact from San Giovanni. Underlying each character's concerns is the mystery of the Madonna itself. Why does Charanis covet this piece over the more valuable, though still dubious, Caravaggio that is also in the monastery? In the end, the novel is a perfect melding of a tightly composed mystery plot, witty dialogue, and a realistic sense of character, all flowing from an intellectual's appreciation for the finer things in life. For readers who discovered Pears's fiction through An Instance of the Fingerpost, the Argyll series--particularly Death and Restoration--offers much to satiate the need for his pleasantly baroque sensibilities. Other works in the Argyll series include The Raphael Affair, The Titian Committee, The Bernini Bust, The Last Judgement, and Giotto's Hand. --Patrick O'Kelley
Book Description
Someone's planning to raid an ancient monastery in Rome. But why? And when? Enter art expert Jonathan Argyll...
"Pears exhibits quite a masterful touch at suspenseful storytelling."-Chicago Tribune
"Simultaneously witty and instructive."-Publishers Weekly
Customer Reviews:
The Perfect Heist.......2007-01-01
Iain Pears has quite a gift for blending his fictional characters and the world of art into a vivid, suspenseful story. "Death and Restoration", one in the series of Pears' art history mysteries, could very well stand on its own. The author deals with the necessary links between books at the beginning and sets the plot in motion for an intriguing romp through Rome, that new readers will enjoy as much as those who have read previous works in the series.
Flavia di Stefano is very likely at a crossroads in her life. She has a week to consider two career moves, to replace General Bottando as head of the Art Theft Squad or to follow him along to his new job. As if that decision weren't time-consuming enough, the squad receives news that a theft will take place at the monastery of San Giovanni, and a former nemesis shows up in Rome to make Flavia even more suspicious of the crime about to be committed. When a theft and near-murder does occur at the monastery, Flavia must recruit the help of her fiance, former art dealer turned professor Jonathan Argyll, and they soon find themselves embroiled in a mystery that is centuries old.
"Death and Restoration" allows readers to see the mystery from various viewpoints, granting insight that couldn't be gained otherwise. The characters are well-drawn and believable, the anxieties they face real and haunting. The mystery comes full circle in the end, and proves to be a delightful and intriguing journey through not only the art world but through possible religious mysteries as well.
Italian art theft mystery.......2006-08-05
In "Death and Restoration", Iain Pears composed a concise mystery replete with historical references featuring former art dealer Jonathan Argyll and his significant other Flavia di Stefano. Flavia, a ranking member of Rome's Art Theft Squad had been tipped off to a possible theft at the austere San Giovanni monastery. She was also made aware of the presence in Rome of Mary Verney, a matronly fiftyish Englishwoman, who was nonetheless a noted art thief.
The target of the thievery was an ancient, fairly nondescript looking Byzantine icon known as the Hodigitria. It was alleged to be the holiest of all Eastern icons and imbued with mystical powers. Verney was commissioned to steal the painting by a Greek criminal Mikis Charanis, who had kidnapped Verney's granddaughter to assure her cooperation.
Before Verney could pilfer the icon, Father Xavier, the father superior of the monastery was severely bludgeoned within the confines of San Giovanni and the icon disappeared. We soon learn that Father Xavier through a series of unwise investments, had lost nearly $250,000 of the monastery's money. He was planning to sell the icon to recoup those funds against the wishes of the order of monks.
Within this confusing framework, Pears using his art history background, navigates his characters through a morass of art and religious history to unravel the mystery of the disappearance of the precious icon.
IAIN PEARS, GRAND MASTER OF RHETORIC.......2006-05-14
You don't have to be an art history major nor a lover of the mystery genre to enjoy this wonderful novel. This book will satisfy anyone who appreciates a well plotted story and engaging characters. While Flavia de Stefano (police-woman extrodinaire)and her fiance Jonathan Argyll (art dealer turned lecturer in baroque studies)are an interesting couple, the star of this story is the "sweet faced" grandmotherly criminal, Mary Verney.
You will come away from this reading experience "chomping at the bit" to get to the bookstore to buy another Iain Pears book. He's Jonathan Gash, Wallace Stegner,Agatha Christie and Umberto Eco all rolled into one. You might also want to try Pears, the Titian Committee.
I bought 3 more Iain Pears books 100 pages into this book.......2004-11-23
I found out that this book is not the first in the series of Pears art history mysteries, but it certainly is not a bad place to start. This is a very fun read, with the right mixture of history, mystery, pace, and humor. You can tell the characters (good mix of male and female too) have been well thought out, as a series gives time for. Not to mention a plot that travels old Byzantium, Rome, Greece, with some political intrigue and all put before a religious backdrop. Pulled of very well!
Finally excellence!.......2003-07-29
DEATH AND RESTORATION is one of the "art history mystery" series. The series' protagonists are quite appealing. They are a still unmarried couple living in Rome. I must admit that we end up knowing her by her first name, Flavia, and him by his last, Argyll. If that seems a bit sexist, it is consistent with the European scene where new attitudes must break through habits that have crusted over centuries. Flavia is with the department of the Italian police that specializes in art crime. She has a mantor figure in her department, and faces competition from the regular police, the Carabinieri. Argyll is an expatriated British art scholar. In the earlier book, the Last Judgment, he was an art dealer. In this volume he has become an art history instructor at a university. The adventures revolve around art theft, invariably including murder. The plots exploit historical mysteries and criss-cross Europe. For example, in the LAST JUDGMENT, Flavia and Argyll go from Rome to Paris, Zurich, London, and the English countryside.
The plot of DEATH AND RESTORATION involves less traveling or the protagonists but is still strongly international. While the book lets Flavia and Argyll stay in Rome, the chain of events reaches to Athens, Istanbul, and London, and touches Austria. The underlying historical mystery involves the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks and the emigration of its aristocracy to western Europe, mostly Italy.
DEATH AND RESTORATION captivated me. The mystery is interesting and its resolution is unexpected, perhaps even surprising. The lives of Flavia and Argyll are at a stage that could be pure drudgery as they wait for their wedding. Instead, both encounter interesting developments, albeit professional ones. Flavia must chose between a move or promotion and Argyll toys with the development of a research project.
My reading of Pears leaves me with mixed feelings. DEATH AND RESTORATION is the third book of Ian Pears that I read. The other two were frustrating displays of a great author using excellent themes, yet failing to reach excellence. His book THE INSTANCE OF THE FINGERPOST relies too heavily on the mystical, while THE LAST JUDGEMENT has a frustratingly obvious plot. DEATH AND RESTORATION is the first that I consider to be a truly first class book, deserving the five star ratingýI am very stingy.
Book Description
This Elibron Classics book is a facsimile reprint of a 1817 edition by Ridgways, London.
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Belief: an issue of life or death for the Christian and church
W. G Singleton
Manufacturer: Star Bible Publications
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Binding: Unknown Binding
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ASIN: 0940999528 |
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Death and Restoration
Iain Pears
Manufacturer: Scribner's
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 000232590X |
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Death and Restoration
Manufacturer: Scribner's
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Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000GLJJ6Y |
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A Death in the Family: A Restoration of the Author's Text (Collected Works of James Agee)
Manufacturer: Univ Tennessee Press
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ASIN: 1572335947 |
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- Loved THE CHILDREN OF GAIA book but no so much the UKTENA...
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Children of Gaia & Uktena (Werewolf: The Apocalypse: Tribe Novel, Book 5)
Richard Lee Byers ,
Stefan Petrucha ,
Steve Prescott , and
Sherilyn Van Valkenburg
Manufacturer: White Wolf Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
Byers, Richard | ( B ) | Authors, A-Z | Horror | Genre Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
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Byers, Richard Lee | ( B ) | Authors, A-Z | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Subjects | Books
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Black Spiral Dancers and Wendigo (Werewolf: The Apocalypse: Tribe Novel, Book 7)
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Bone Gnawers & Stargazers (Werewolf: The Apocalypse: Tribe Novel, Book 4)
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Red Talons & Fianna (Werewolf: The Apocalypse: Tribe Novel, Book 3)
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Silent Striders & Black Furies (Werewolf: The Apocalypse: Tribe Novel, Book 2)
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Shadow Lords & Get of Fenris (Werewolf: The Apocalypse: Tribe Novel, Book 1)
ASIN: 1588468127 |
Book Description
The Garou, the bestial werewolves who fight to save the natural world, have their backs to the wall. In Tribe Novel: Children of Gaia, the storyteller Cries Havoc, robbed of his memories by the Wyrm, fights to become whole again. In Tribe Novel: Uktena, another songkeeper named Amy Hundred-Voices comes face to face with Lord Arkady, the Silver Fang accused of conspiring with the Wyrm. Can she turn him from his destructive path?
Customer Reviews:
Loved THE CHILDREN OF GAIA book but no so much the UKTENA..........2007-05-31
The reason I give this one 4 stars and not three is because the CHILDREN OF GAIA part of it is really good. Cries Havoc is a great Metis, and his story is very felt, to put it in some way.
But the Uktena part of the book... didn't get to me. Maybe it was because they were introducing a new character halfway down the road, and that she felt so out of the story... Yes, she had some things in common with the main plot, such as the bad guy and the sphere Arkady ends up waiting, but I'm afraid that if this book hadn't been there, no one would have miss a thing about the plot...
Maybe my words are harsh but I couldn't see the time of ending this part of the book so I could move to the next.
Book Description
A ground-breaking book on the needs and issues of girls with attentional problems: why they are often undiagnosed, how they are different from boys, and what their special needs are in school, in their social world and at home. Age-related checklists from pre-school to high school help parents and professionals better identify and help girls with AD/HD.
Customer Reviews:
Glad I got it........2007-08-24
Whoa! Easy to consume and lots of documentation. As a mom of a newly diagnosed AD/HD inattentive type daughter, I am glad I got this book.
Understanding Girls with ADHD is a must read for parents of girls!.......2007-02-18
This book was suggested to me by a psychologist that has worked with my daughter, who has ADHD. It was a very informative, easy-to-read book that will be a guide for me for many years. It was a very validating book and a lot of the suggestions were things I was doing already and things that parents need to know and learn how to do. The most important point in the book is something that all adults dealing with a child with ADHD need to know, treating ADHD isn't just about producing a good student, it is about giving them the help to live a quality life in every aspect.I work for a group of pediatricians and they were pleased that I shared the knowledge I gained from this book and others I have read.
Understanding Girls with ADHD.......2006-11-04
This is a great book for parents of very talented girls that are not performing to their potential. I have read many books on this subject to find strategies to help two of my children, a boy and a girl, be successful in public school systems. The book is well organized. The author accurately describes behaviors in girls which prevent early detection by teachers. This book gave me a new perspective on the ways girls deal with ADHD while an adolescent. Help your daughter develop positive strategies before she gets into trouble with her peers, read this book.
Great book for understanding the differences between boys and girls with ADD/ADHD.......2006-08-29
This is a very good book for assisting parents in understanding the different ways ADD/ADHD presents in girls than in boys. I found it very useful in understanding some of my daughter's behaviours. This book describes, in a very helpful way, some of the ways a girl adjusts to ADD/ADHD as she grows and the different responses she may have to dealing with her ADD/ADHD.
Excellent Book!.......2006-08-17
I couldn't put this book down. It enlightened me to so many traits my daughter has that are ADD and not just a spoiled, picky, manipulative, spacey, forgetful, disorganized child!! I knew some of these traits were ADD, but not things like a very picky eater, or tactile sensitivity (she refuses to wear clothes made of certain fabrics, or what appears as over-reacting when she scrapes her knee or other minor injury). I've recommended it to several other mom's and dad's who have ADD daughters!
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- Excelent book
- Very Good Amateur Treatment of Croatian Cuisine.
- Not a good book if you don't eat pork.
- Croatian Cookbook in English
- A varied cuisine seldom reflected in regional cookbooks
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The Best of Croatian Cooking
Liliana Pavicic , and
Gordana Pirker-Mosher
Manufacturer: Hippocrene Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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All Along the Danube: Recipes from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria (Hippocrene International Cookbooks)
ASIN: 0781809886 |
Customer Reviews:
Excelent book.......2007-09-03
If you need to keep the Croatian culture in the family, you need to have this book on home!
Very Good Amateur Treatment of Croatian Cuisine........2006-01-10
`The Best of Croatian Cooking, Expanded Edition' by Liliana Pavicic and Gordana Pirker-Mosher is published as a member of `The Hippocrene Cookbook Library' which seems to focus on all those national and regional cuisines which will appeal to a sizable emigrant population, but which is not covered by the mainstream foodie literati. This would be just about everything except French, Italian, Spanish, Greek, `Mediterranean', Moroccan, Indian, Thai, Chinese, Japanese, German, Russian, Turkish, Lebanese, and Jewish cooking. Their real forte is for small central and eastern European nationalities such as Hungarian, Czech, Polish, Slovak, Ukrainian, and Bulgarian cooking. I am especially drawn to several of these national cuisines, having some relatives from Hungary and Slovakia.
The problem with these books in general and with this volume in particular is that amateurs in both culinary skills and journalistic or scholastic skills write them. We are not reading minor league Paula Wolferts here. That is not to say there is nothing of value here. In fact, the intellectual discoveries one can make in this book may be even more interesting than the culinary ones. Croatia lies squarely in the confluence of three culinary dynamos. Directly to the west is Italy, especially the leading culinary region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia. To the north is Vienna, the capitol of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire, of which Croatia was a part for several centuries. To the south is Greece and Turkey, the heart of the old Ottoman Empire who was Croatia's landlord before the Austrians took over. So, Croatian cuisine is a great gemish of world class influences, with a bit to add on its own, being, like Friuli-Venezia Giulia, a fertile site for grape growing and, therefore, wine making.
The authors take seriously their interest in giving a good picture of the regional cuisines of Croatia, except that they fail to handle this task effectively. Their first lapse is that they neglect to include a map of modern Croatia. I would consider this a flaw even in a book about well-known Italy. When you are covering Croatia, the omission is deadly, since the modern borders are highly irregular, shaped as it is like an hourglass tilted at a 45 degree angle, with its base on the Adriatic. When I checked my trusty Oxford Atlas of the world, I saw things of which this book gave me little inkling. And yet, it was not much help, as the book deals with provincial names, which are very difficult to see on a small-scale map.
The next failing is that they don't identify the regional source of the various recipes, after going to so much trouble to identify the culinary characteristics of each province, they don't say from which province each recipe comes. It would be very interesting to know if a strudel recipe comes from a province closer to Vienna or closer to Greece.
Speaking of strudel, the one reason I would buy this book is because it has a recipe for both strudel dough and for cabbage strudel. This reason is not compelling, as if you already own Rose Levy Beranbaum's `The Pie and Pastry Bible', you already have a whole chapter of strudel, but our authors give us a fair approach, but few tips if things go wrong. For that, you will need to go to Beranbaum.
Since we are at the confluence of three very well known cuisines, there is really very little here which is new to the experienced culinary eye. There are novelties, especially among the simpler dishes, so that the book may be a truer picture of the cuisine of poverty than most books on Italian cuisine, but the similarities are such that if you already have lots of Italian cookbooks, especially Lydia Bastianich's `La Cuisine di Lydia', you will not get much that is new (Bastianich grew up in Istria, which is now part of Croatia).
My last comment is that I think the authors may have gone just a bit too far from their roots to standard American cooking practice in that their most common cooking fat is `cooking oil'. I am willing to bet that the traditional Croatian cook, like their Italian and Greek neighbors primarily used either olive oil, pumice oil, lard, or butter, not corn or safflower oil.
If I were to pick a single recipe that makes this book worthwhile for the cookbook collector, it would be the squid and potato salad, in spite of the fact that the title and ingredients say `squid' and the procedure says `cuttlefish'. This is just another dropped detail which makes the book less than perfect.
Recommended for the foodie cookbook collector. Highly recommended it you have a Croatian background.
Not a good book if you don't eat pork........2005-09-17
There alot of receipes that include pork or are pork. You can subsitute lamp or beef for some. The book is very imformative though. Some receipes come with little back grounds on where they come from and their use in holidays. So if you eat pork. Good book. If not.. Well it's still has some good stuff in it.
Croatian Cookbook in English.......2005-08-03
Before my trip to Croatia I wanted to become acquainted with Croatian cuisine. Also, I collect cookbooks from my travels, so this way I had the book in hand BEFORE I left and didn't have to search for it in Croatia. I have already tried several recipes which are simple and good. I was pleased with my purchase.
A varied cuisine seldom reflected in regional cookbooks.......2001-01-27
Croatia's turbulent history has resulted in a varied cuisine seldom reflected in regional cookbooks, and The Best of Croatian Cooking provides an excellent selection of over 200 dishes from classic main courses to desserts. Recipes have been modified for easy preparation and American kitchens but are filled with appeal and retain their cultural authenticity.
Books:
- Death of a Stranger
- Death of Riley (Molly Murphy Mysteries)
- Deceptions (Laws of the Blood, Book 4)
- Decider
- Depth Perception (Berkley Sensation)
- Dutch Uncle (Hard Case Crime)
- Enemy Access Denied: Slam the Door on the Devil With One Simple Decision
- Fall of a Philanderer (Daisy Dalrymple Mysteries)
- Fatlands: A Hannah Wolfe Crime Novel (Hannah Wolfe Crime Novels)
- Fer-de-Lance (Crime Line)
Books Index
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