Mortal Radiance (A Georgia O’Keeffe Mystery, 2)
1935. Georgia O’Keeffe is in San Cristobal, New Mexico, designing a stained-glass window for a chapel being built to memorialize D.H. Lawrence. One morning, arriving at the chapel early to see the light through her window, Georgia finds the murdered body of Flora, a young Navajo artist. Flora’s fiancé, also an artist, is arrested by the inept police, but Georgia is certain he is innocent. Sheriff Ryan McCaffrey (Georgia’s lover but not the sheriff investigating Flora’s murder) suggests she investigate on her own. He is too busy with his own secret investigation to help her. Georgia has little time to investigate, as her days are busy with sketching and painting, dealing with the socialites and artists gathered at her friend’s expansive home, and her sex life.
I found keeping track of the numerous characters difficult, but I didn’t read the first book in the series, which might have helped. There are artists, socialites, druggies, Nazis, Navajos, gangsters, cops, receptionists, servants, and more. For a short novel, the plot has many threads, and Georgia looks for the pattern that will connect them all, but maybe there isn’t one.
This is not exactly a genre-true historical mystery. I believe the author is mimicking the art of Georgia O’Keeffe in the way the novel is “all over the place.” The prose moves between breathtakingly beautiful (when describing the landscape) to awkward (in various places) to crude (the sex talk). Perhaps Lasky is mirroring, in her writing and story creation, Georgia’s art and personality. Fans of the first in the series will want to read this one.
