A Rising Man

Mukherjee, Abir. A Rising Man. New York: Pegasus 2017. Print

First Sentences:

At least he was well dressed.

Black tie, tux, the works. If you're going to get yourself killed, you may as well look your best. 

Description:

I'm late to the party, I now add a critical evaluation factor to  determine the quality of a book. To my big three evaluation points ("Characters," "Plot," and "Writing Style"), I've now added  "Setting," the world where the characters live and plot occurs. Probably obvious to everyone else, but I've only recently begun to realize how much a role Setting has in my love for a specific book. 

The omnipresent setting sets the tone, drives the plot, defines the characters by their reactions to their world, and exemplifies the writing skill of the author challenged to realistically, compellingly describe an unique environment. Maybe it's a futuristic Sci Fi setting like in Ender's Game that pulls readers more deeply into the story. Or maybe the rawness of a maximum prison like My Life in Prison that grabs your attention. Or the dispassionate ocean in Life of Pi. Or the icy whiteness of Arctic Solitaire. Or the quiet isolation of a rural farm in Plainsong.  

This realization for me was brought about by Abir Mukherjee's wonderful detective novel, A Rising Man. The setting is Calcutta in 1919 colonial India. A Rising Mani details the daily life of both Indians and British as they exist in this environment, constantly interacting with each other, looking at their world from completely different perspectives.

First, there is the steamy hot environment of non-air conditioned post-War India where every minute the characters are aware of and must respond to the heat, the monsoon rains, dirt, poverty, stuffy rooms, and for some, the calm atmosphere and cool drinks beckoning from the Bengal Club.  

The stairwell smelled of respectability. In truth, it smelled of disinfectant, but in Calcutta that's pretty much the same thing.

Then there is the underlying tension between the 300 million Indians beginning to whisper about independence and the 150,000 British who tenuously keep order and rule over them. 

[There is an] insolence of natives for not being grateful for all the British had done and continue to do for them;

Captain Sam Wyndham, the newly-arrived Scotland Yard officer, has come to Calcutta to head up a special police force. He is also trying to escape his World War I memories, the loss of his family, and his opium addiction. But his first murder investigation, a back alley murder of an important city official, has undercurrents of Indian unrest with British rule that suggest challenges beyond the usual crime. 

Sounds pretty straightforward, huh? But it is the unsettling environment that breathes life and dimension into a simple investigation and challenges Wyndham each day. 

I sat on the bed and, not for the first time, questioned what I was doing out here, in this country where the natives despised you and the climate drove you mad and the water could kill you.  

A Rising Man brought back memories for me of my year in India. But for readers not familiar with the country, believe me, you will know and feel the realities of that country intimately from the first pages. The heat, the monsoon rains, the poverty, the class barriers, and the rising tide of anger against the British. 

A bonus is that author Mukherjee has written several more books about Wyndham and his life in British India. Can't wait to dive into them and re-enter the setting of colonial India. Very highly recommended.

Happy reading. 

Fred

Other book recommendations
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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Mukherjee, Abir. A Necessary Evil.   

Captain Wyndham and his Indian sargeant are riding in the car with an important prince when an assassin kills the prince with an ancient gun and later shoots himself. Religious fanatic? Political terrorist? Or someone with a completely different motive? Loved it. 

Brierley, Saroo.  A Long Way Home.   

True memoir of the author when, as a five-year-old boy is accidently left by his brother at an unknown train station in India. Not knowing the name of his hometown, where he is, or how he will survive drives this very engaging book. A great look inside India and its people as well. Highly recommended (previously reviewed here)

The Rescue Artist

Dolnick, Edward. The Rescue Artist: : A True Story of Art, Thieves, and the Hunt for a Missing Masterpiece. New York: HarperCollins. 2005. Print.

First Sentences:

In the predawn gloom of a Norwegian winter morning, two men in a stolen car pulled to a halt in front of the National Gallery, Norway's preeminent art museum.

They left the engine running and raced across the snow. Behind the bushes along the museum's front wall they found the ladder they had stashed away earlier that night. Silently, they leaned the ladder against the wall.

Description:

There's something endless fascinating to me about crime capers: the people, the planning, the actual theft, what goes wrong, the pursuit by authorities, and the tension between escape and capture. Edward Dolnick vividly satisfies my tastes for true crimes of art theft in his riveting The Rescue Artist:: A True Story of Art, Thieves, and the Hunt for a Missing Masterpiece.  

The book open with the brazen theft of Edward Munch's masterpiece, The Scream, from the National Museum in Oslo, Norway, in 1994. Two men simply prop a borrowed ladder against the outside wall of the museum, break a second-floor window, lift the painting off its hook, climb back down the ladder, and drive off. Total time: 50 seconds. Alarms and video monitors were working but ignored by the guard on duty. No fingerprints or footprints were found, but the ladder remained propped up to the broken window. And the thieves left a note: "Thanks for the poor security." Value of the painting? $72 million. (In 2012, The Scream was sold for $120 million, the second highest art sale at the time.)

When Norway refuses to pay the thieves' demand for a $1 million ransom, Scotland Yard's Art Theft Department and Charley Hill, special art theft officer, goes to work, acting undercover as an agent for the Getty Museum in California who wants to pay the ransom for Norway so that they can borrow the painting and exhibit it later in their museum.

The trials and tribulations that result from Hill's undercover preparation and bold actions drive the book forward at a breath-taking pace. Hill must find out who the thieves are, contact them, persuade them to accept him as a credible buyer, and then get his hands on the painting to restore it to the National Museum. And he must deal with the well-meaning but interfering Norwegian police who are holding a convention in the hotel where Hill meets with the thieves.

Hill works with a variety of characters on this case from the police and the criminal world, weaving glib lies to make the sting work. His quick wit saves him on many occasions when plans are threatened as the unexpected occurs. But he has had a successful career. In twenty years, he recovered over $100 million worth of stolen art. 

Author Donick has done high-quality research to weave in many juicy tales of other art thefts. Interpol statistics document that art theft accounts for "between $4 billion and $6 billion a year." The ease in which art thieves operate is astonishing. Each job is simple, fast, and brazen, often just removing a piece off the wall and tucking it under a coat in front of many witnesses.

For thieves, stealing art is a tempting business. They steal "because they want to and can." There is a lot of very valuable (read "salable") unprotected art just waiting to be taken. Any amount of money gained by thieves is profit (since they paid nothing for the piece), so selling a $17 million artwork for $800,000 is fine by them. Beyond the simple payoff, there are other reasons motivating art thieves:

Thieves steal art to show their peers how nervy they are, and to gain trophies they can flaunt, and to see their crimes splashed across the headlines, and to stick it to those in power. Thieves steal, too, because they use paintings as black-market currency for deals with their fellow crooks.

One home in England was robbed several times just because it was isolated, too large to have quality security, and had so much art. One Rembrandt in England was stolen four different times. The Louvre supposedly had the Mona Lisa stolen in 1922 and never recovered it, and are displaying a copy now. The largest theft, occurring in Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1990, involved $300 million worth of art by Vermeer, Rembrandt, Manet, and Degas. No trace has ever been found of these painting, nor has any ransom note been received. 

Police are not particularly concerned with art theft as opposed to crimes that involve actions that harm people. It is expensive and time-consuming to go undercover to recover stolen pieces. The Scotland Yard Art Theft Department knew, despite its major victories in recovering valuable pieces, it must constantly prove its mettle merely to secure current funding.

"The police won't say so," remarks Charley Hill, "but what they think is, 'What's so important about pictures, anyway?' The attitude is, 'You've seen one, you've seen 'em all.'"

Here is a great, true caper story, complete with interesting characters, valuable art pieces, bumbled opportunities, genuine danger, and suspense woven into a detailed account. While The Scream theft is the prominent crime, The Rescue Artist provides plenty of other tales of crimes, criminals, and detective work to satisfy any mystery/art lover. Highly recommended for its fascinating details and well-written narration.

Happy reading. 

Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Irving, Clifford. Fake! The Story of Elmyr De Hory, the Greatest Art Forger of Our Time

Absolutely riveting true account of the life of a master forger in the 20th century who sold hundreds of fake paintings and sketches of Vermeer, Picasso, Matisse, Modigliani and more to many major museums and collectors, including Nazi leader Hermann Goering.

Shapiro, B.A. The Art Forger

Fictional tale of an art student hired to produce a fake Degas from the original, but as she studies the masterpiece and begins to create her copy, she begins to doubt its authenticity (previously reviewed here).