The Dead Can’t Paint
This is the latest and last of the Gibraltar-set Giovanni Bresciano mysteries. An arrogant and obnoxious French painter comes to Gibraltar in 1817 and proceeds to offend so many people that there is no shortage of suspects when he is found murdered.
Bresciano is tasked to investigate, to the annoyance of the Town Major, the Army officer who is responsible for dealing with crime in Gibraltar. Bresciano’s attempts at detection are complicated by the involvement in the case of so many odd characters. They include a glum lady herbalist that Bresciano’s sister is trying to match him up with, and a strange 10-year-old boy who today would probably be assessed as being somewhere on the autistic spectrum. A more welcome, but sometimes equally stressful, distraction is the return to Gibraltar, after decades away, of Bresciano’s first love, Bianca, now widowed herself.
The story is framed by scenes set elsewhere much later in the 19th century, with unrelated (or are they?) characters, and there is a bonus in the form of a mention of Bresciano in a famous author’s newly-discovered letter, and two short stories, one of which is narrated by Bresciano himself.
The Bresciano series comes to a fitting end with this mystery, and I choose to boast that it is the first one in which I spotted the murderer before Bresciano did.
