Here are a couple of queries that got my attention. One is a who-done-it and the other is an historical novel. One short, one long. I asked for fulls on both of them. Did I rep them or not? What would you do?
Clyde Lovellet has been sheriff in his small Montana town forever. He has no
serious crimes to solve, and runs unopposed every election. Pretty cushy job,
until five mutilated bodies are discovered during the worst weather his county
has ever experienced. Since two of the dead are judges, Clyde must form an
uneasy alliance with the FBI, battle the town fathers, and find out which of his
neighbors did the killings. He unravels a tale of greed, unrequited love,
betrayal and madness, and solves the case with the help of his 113-year-old,
ex-Texas Ranger father.
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A formerly unknown drawing by a renowned Flemish artist and the search for its source are the key themes in this literary novel. Abbess Katrina of Vineyard Abbey is found paralyzed and in shock in her study. After her death, an antique silver point drawing is discovered, hidden in her desk. Elizabeth van Doeren of the Museum of Bruges and the Bruges police are enlisted to investigate a possible connection between the drawing, and what looks like an attack on the Abbess.
While the police investigate the possibility of a crime, Dr. van Doeren investigates the drawing. She soon discovers that the sketch, hitherto unknown and of a very personal nature, is a preparatory sketch by Rogier van der Weyden, the famous Flemish painter, for his masterpiece, "St. Luke Drawing a Portrait of the Madonna." Who then is the Madonna, the woman who appears in the sketch as a love interest for the artist? How did the sketch come to be hidden in Vineyard Abbey, formerly the Béguinage of Bruges? And how did the would-be robber know of it?
To find the answer, we must study the life and times of Rogier van der Weyden, of his passion for art and his unrequited love for the model in his masterpiece.