For his established fans and new readers alike, Tonino Benacquista's
Framed will be another first-rate read. Like his earlier
Holy Smoke it is clever, witty, engaging and dark - and
not to be missed.
An Italian born in France, Benacquista sampled various careers
as a film student, a museum night watchman, a train guard
on the Paris to Rome run, and as a self-styled cocktail
parasite in Paris before settling down as a screenwriter
and author whose novels often read like action-packed movie
scripts. Drawing on his experiences in art galleries, on
his keen observation of people, and on his endlessly perverse
sense of humour, Benacquista sets his thirties-something
hero, Antoine Andrieux, in a gallery as an apprentice picture-hanger
and in a billiard hall as an up-and-coming star player and
surrounds him with a cast of characters, most likeable but
some definitely not. But all are involved in helping or
hindering him as he solves the mysteries and murders connected
to a small yellow picture titled "Attempt 30." Why
its name? Why is it so out of place among the other thirty-five “black
scribblings on a black background” in the newly arrived
packing crate at the gallery? And who suddenly wants to
steal it, and why, slashing Antoine’s cheek in the
process? And why did Fate permit the statue to fall on him
and crush his right hand during the scuffle?
As Antoine leaves the hospital, describing himself as being
in “the ranks of the unsightly, the embarrassing and
the clumsy,” he anticipates a life not as a picture-hanger
but as a museum guard “with one blue sleeve folded
back with a big nappy pin.” He refuses offers of medical
rehabilitation, learns to type left-handed letters to his
Biarritz parents as “Dear you two,” copes with
using and hiding his disabled arm, rues the loss of his
billiards skills, and resolves to discover more about “Attempt
30” and its creator. His search leads him to the Paris
art depot, “a glory-hole of art history,” where
Nicolas, “the depot’s memory” of its five
thousand pieces, is killed for trying to help him. He narrowly
escapes a similar end, not only at the depot but again at
his apartment when the same assailant tries to strangle
him with a shoelace. Besides crossing dangerous paths with
his attacker, Antoine meets a female art magazine writer
who assists him in his research about “Attempt 30” and
in learning that “one hand was enough” for their
lovemaking. Then the body of a gallery owner strangled with
the same shoelace that Antoine eluded earlier is found with
the right hand mutilated and Antoine on the run as a suspected
murderer is left to discover just how loyal his friends
are at the billiards academy where the store room becomes
his “Hilton of Hideouts.” And as he finally
resolves the mysteries of “Attempt 30”, the
deaths around it and the attacks upon him, he discovers
that even one handed he can still play billiards well enough
to rack up a winning game against a demented murderer.
With an intriguing crossover between the intricacies of
art and the skills of billiards, clever commentaries about
both and a truly likeable left-handed hero solving mysteries
and dealing with his disability, often humorously, Benacquista
has also racked up another winner in Framed to go along
with his earlier highly entertaining Holy Smoke.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
M. Wayne Cunningham writes his reviews in Kamloops BC. Formerly an
English instructor and a senior manager in post-secondary education
in three provinces he also served as the Executive Director of the
Saskatchewan Arts Board. A member of the Crime Writers of Canada and
the Canadian Authors Association, his reviews have appeared in various
publications including a weekly column he wrote for two years for
the Kamloops Daily News. He can be reached at mw_cunningham@telus.net
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