7 Historical Novels That Explore The Underbelly of the Art World

Laura Leffler on art crimes in fiction, near and far

When I started writing my debut thriller, Tell Them You Lied, I didn’t set out to write an art historical crime novel. It begins in Brooklyn on the morning of 9/11, which in my mind is not history but memory. I was a recent college graduate and newbie New Yorker on that day, zombie-walking the stunned streets, inhaling the fumes, and taking photographs. But memory is reliably unreliable, and to write the story I wanted to write, I had to do research too. That meant watching hours of YouTube videos—broadcast recordings, home movies, interviews. I looked up technology and fashion trends and music and what billboards were up on Houston. I needed to know about the mural outside the Nuyorican Poets Café and what graffiti lay down the road.

In other words, I needed to see things that no longer existed. And that’s how I knew I was writing a historical novel.

Many art historians, myself included, turn to art for a similar reason—for a glimpse into the past. An artwork is a microcosm of its time; through it, we can see an entire zeitgeist. Politics, conventions, materials, individual biographies—it is all present. It makes sense, then, that writers often use art as a tool to access history. Once I began down the road of an art historical crime novel I started noticing I was not alone in this niche genre.

Here are some standouts:

Read the list on Crime Read: http://crimereads.com/7-historical-novels-that-explore-the-underbelly-of-the-art-world/