Starred review from April 4, 2022
Set in Edinburgh, this outstanding mystery thriller from Miller (The Blue Horse) focuses on two damaged individuals’ compulsive search for truth as their lives disintegrate around them. Thomas Tallis, an art expert assigned to confirm the authenticity of a multimillion-dollar painting, The Goldenacre, has been fired from his London curating job under mysterious circumstances. His wife is filing for divorce, he has no access to the young son he loves, and his father—an MI6 operative—is a disembodied voicemail that never replies. Shona Sandison, an old-school crime reporter for the Edinburgh Post, is all about legwork, except that she’s semi-disabled from an earlier on-assignment attack. While Sandison investigates the murder of a local artist and then a city councilman, the Post’s spiraling demise threatens to make her expendable. Tallis digs deeper into the provenance of The Goldenacre, his path ultimately intersecting with Sandison’s. Together they unearth layers of lies, corruption, and deceit. In a style recalling the brutal dreariness of le Carré, Miller describes a pivotal character as “sharp and severe as a snapped bone.” It’s also an apt description of this biting tale of society in decline. Noir fans won’t want to miss it. Agent: Fiona Brownlee, Brownlee Donald Assoc. (U.K.).
April 1, 2022
In Edinburgh, Scotland, a painting called The Goldenacre by Scottish artist and architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh is given to a public gallery by the owners in order to avoid heavy inheritance taxes. Thomas Tallis is a representative of the government sent to authenticate and evaluate the painting. When he arrives in Edinburgh, a local artist is brutally murdered. Shona Sandison, a local reporter, is covering the murder. Then a member of the local council is also killed. In disjointed fashion, two separate story lines follow Sandison and Tallis as their personal dramas and the lines of inquiry they follow slowly progress. Miller presents an intriguing plot but fails to execute it in an entertaining way. The two protagonists are depressing and dejected. The separate story lines fail to converge until near the end of the book. While the concerns over the painting and the connection to the dead artist are resolved, the resolution of the second murder seems an afterthought. The conclusion is also disappointing. VERDICT Though Miller (The Blue Horse) is an excellent wordsmith, he unfortunately takes a good plot and executes it poorly.--Sandy Knowles
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April 15, 2022
Mystery swirls around a painting about to be transferred from the family who inherited it to Edinburgh's Public Gallery. Thomas Tallis, no relation to the English Renaissance composer and barely any to his own eminent wife, classical pianist Astrella Nemours, or his equally eminent father, Sir Raymond T. Tallis, retired director of MI6, has come to Edinburgh's Public Gallery from London's Civic Gallery, which he left under the cloud of an undisclosed scandal. His first task is to confirm the provenance of The Goldenacre, a large, splendid watercolor Charles Rennie Mackintosh painted nearly a hundred years ago. But there are mysterious obstacles in the way of this routine task. First, Olivia and Felix Farquharson, the aristocratic twins who own the painting, don't want conservator Roberta Donnelly to accompany Tallis on his visit to inspect the painting; then, when the two of them make the trip to the Farquharsons' Denholm House, the painting suddenly turns out to be unavailable because it's getting some last-minute cleaning. As Tallis struggles to establish a toehold in the Public Gallery, senior reporter Shona Sandison is struggling to maintain her perch at the Edinburgh Post in the light of the layoffs bound to follow new editor Ron Ingleton's appointment. The murder of painter Robert Love, the disturbingly similar murder of Edinburgh City Councillor John Cullen, and the fire that destroys the Mackintosh Building at the Glasgow School of Art encourage her to keep asking questions that inevitably lead her to Tallis, who's meanwhile received a package containing a severed tongue. A promising, tear-stained debut longer on suspense than surprise.
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May 15, 2022
Fans of Scottish-Grit crime writer Ian Rankin will love this twisty mystery, set in Edinburgh, in which a disputed work of art results in mayhem, including two murders and a packaged tongue. A landscape painting called The Goldenacre, believed to be the last work of the famous early-twentieth-century Scottish artist Charles Rennie Mackintosh, needs its authenticity checked. Enter Thomas Tallis, a former art curator who now works for the British government and has been uprooted to Edinburgh, is plagued by grief over his divorce and lack of contact with his son. Before Tallis can see the painting, a famous Edinburgh artist and a member of the city council are murdered. Enter Shona Sandison, long-time and long-embittered journalist, who is assigned to the case and suspects that the painting is linked to the crimes. Tallis thinks so, too, and he and Sandison form an uneasy working relationship. Miller's characters may seem almost unbelievably bleak to some, but his plot is ingenious, and the atmosphere--both sinister Edinburgh and the embattled newsroom--is brilliantly evoked.
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