Transcript / LoLT: World's Best Art Detective and Two New Books — 20 September 2024

This is a transcription of LoLT: World’s Best Art Detective and Two New Books — 20 September 2024

[cheerful music]

Melissa: Coming up, a thrilling, funny new twist on an old monster story.

David: A writer imagines what it was like to be married to Oscar Wilde.

Melissa: Plus, our distraction of the week. I’m Mel.

David: I’m Dave. This is the library of lost time.

Melissa: This week, I decided to spend this Spooky Season becoming a Rachel Harrison completist. She’s the author of five novels that put a fresh twist on horror tropes. In a 2022 episode of our podcast, ‘The Library of Lost Time,’ we recommended ‘Such Sharp Teeth,’ her feminist riff on a werewolf story. And last year, I kicked off my Spooky Season reading with ‘Black Sheep.’ That one is a comedy-horror novel about a girl named Vesper who learns a family secret. Then she basically burns her world to the ground. Harrison has also tackled a witch story with ‘Cackle,’ and has an Audible short story called ‘The Veil’ about a woman who works at a Victorian living history museum.

Melissa: This Spooky Season, she’s gifted us with a vampire story called ‘So Thirsty.’ I started reading it last Saturday morning after breakfast and finished at about midnight, and I had so much fun.

Melissa: The setup was irresistible to me. Our heroine Sloane is feeling her age and dreading her upcoming birthday. Her cheating rat of a husband surprises her with a gift. She hates surprises. Even this one is a weekend with her lifelong best friend Naomi at a fancy spa resort.

Melissa: Naomi is a wild child; her boyfriend is a rockstar, and she never encountered an iffy situation she didn’t want to explore. So instead of spending the weekend sipping wine by a fireplace, she accepts an invitation from some sexy locals to join them at a mansion for an evening of debauchery. One thing leads to another and before you can say ‘toss me that garlic clove,’ Sloane and Naomi’s lives are changed forever.

Melissa: Rachel Harrison is so good at this. It’s super fun to vicariously join these characters as they careen into danger with poor judgment. And the dialogue! Sloane and Naomi have been friends for decades, and the way they talk to each other sounds like it. The rhythm and shorthand of their conversations felt like a transcript of eavesdropping on old friends.

Melissa: After some sexy, hedonistic, candlelit bits at the mansion, the two women are faced with the practicalities of the vampire life. It’s tragic and hilarious at the same time. How do vampires put on makeup? Are all vampires murderers? The collision of boring, everyday stuff and the rules of being undead is fun to think about. And along the way, Harrison has stuff to say about aging, trauma, and how we define the lives we want.

Melissa: This is a wild ride. If you like your horror with a side of sarcasm, I can’t recommend this enough. It’s ‘So Thirsty’ by Rachel Harrison.

David: Louis Bayard is a historical fiction author. He seems to particularly enjoy speculating about the emotional lives of famous people. What was it like, when they were young and falling in love on the road to fame? How did their fame change their interior lives? That kind of thing.

David: His last book, ‘Jackie and Me,’ was about the early romance between Jack Kennedy and Jackie Bouvier. The Washington Post said it was one of the best novels of 2022. He wrote ‘Courting Mr. Lincoln,’ about a romantic triangle between Abraham Lincoln, Mary Todd, and another man.

David: He’s also got a book that features Eugene Francois Vindocq, the world’s first private investigator. We talked about him in our last episode. That book is called ‘The Black Tower.’ It’s a mystery set in 19th century Paris, of course.

David: Bayard is probably most famous for his book ‘The Pale Blue Eye.’ That story features Edgar Allan Poe’s time at West Point. It became a Netflix series with Christian Bale. His latest is out. It’s called ‘The Wildes: A Novel in Five Acts.’ It speculates on the relationship between Oscar Wilde and his wife, Constance.

David: You don’t need to know much about Oscar Wilde to know that their relationship went poorly. They started happy. But then he was imprisoned for homosexuality. That led to the financial and emotional ruin of his family. Wilde’s wife and his two sons had to sell everything. She changed her name and left England with the boys. Bayard imagines what that must have been like for everyone involved.

David: Reviewers for the book have talked about the sharp dialogue, its emotional depth, and how well Bayard has drawn Oscar Wilde. The book just came out this week. It’s ‘The Wildes: A Novel in Five Acts’ by Louis Bayard.

David: And now, our Distraction of the Week.

David: We just published our episode on Detective Agencies. Frequently, when I’m doing the research for our shows, I run across more than I can use. One of the items I ran across this time is about the greatest art detective working today.

David: His name is Arthur Brand. He’s Dutch. He lives in Amsterdam. He is said to have recovered hundreds of millions of dollars worth of stolen art. He’s tracked down work from Dali, Picasso, and Van Gogh. He’s been hired by museums to negotiate with warlords for the return of stolen work. He recovered a $70 million painting that had been stolen from the yacht of a Saudi billionaire two decades after its theft.

David: He’s a private citizen. He’s not directly associated with any law enforcement agency. It’s not even his day job. He’s got a company, but their bread-and-butter is advising art collectors about forgeries.

David: Like most detectives, his status as a citizen gives him some latitude. He’s said, ‘I never break the law because I always work with the police. But I never give up informants. Because they will shoot you dead.’ He’s an open book. He tells criminals where he lives. He publishes his phone number. He says it builds trust.

David: I found out about him because I read an article about the return of a Van Gogh. It had been stolen from a museum in the Netherlands. A few weeks into the Covid crisis, a thief did a smash-and-grab. One night last year, Brand got a text. The text says, ‘Mr. Brand, do you have a duty of confidentiality?’

David: He texted back, ‘I’m not a priest, but if I give my word, I keep it.’ That led to a negotiation with a criminal who’d come in possession of the Van Gogh through some other illegal deal. Frequently, stolen art becomes something to barter in a drug or an arms deal. The criminal wanted to return it to the museum because, first, there was no reward for it, it was hot, and he couldn’t move it, and, second, he had just a smidgen of goodwill.

David: So a few days later, a guy shows up with a painting in a blue Ikea bag, drops it off at Brand’s apartment, and disappears. Brand opens the bag. It’s the missing Van Gogh. It’s valued at over five million dollars.

David: Brand credits a lot of his success to his contacts. He got his start by studying with a famous art smuggler. He worked with him for six years. He met people from Scotland Yard, the FBI, con men, forgers, and thieves.

David: Brand doesn’t do it for the money. After recovering some World War II artifacts, a reporter asked him about it. He said, ‘Who do I send my invoice to, Angela Merkel?’ He likes the thrill and the fame, and he likes having the stories. He’s said, ‘Nobody pays you, but at the end, you can write books about it, which are translated into seven or eight languages.’

David: He’s written a couple. One of them is available in English. It’s about Brand recovering one of Adolph Hitler’s favorite statues. It’s called ‘Hitler’s Horses: The Incredible True Story of the Detective Who Infiltrated the Nazi Underworld.’ If you’re curious, the reviews for that book are solid. Writers have said it reads like a thriller with a good dose of history and humor. That’s ‘Hitler’s Horses’ by Arthur Brand, the world’s foremost art detective.

Melissa: Visit strongsenseofplace.com/library for more on the books we talked about today including the art detective Arthur Brand.

David: Thanks for joining us on the library of last time. Remember to visit your local library and your independent bookstore to lose some time yourself.

Melissa: Stay curious. We’ll talk to you soon.

[cheerful music]

Top image courtesy of gambler_94/Unsplash.