A book not for me. Struggled all the way through it and did not enjoy the story nor did I feel anything for the characters. ( )

Taking a real life crime and weaving a novel around it is a popular way to build a novel but it can backfire badly - either by being too close to reality to be interesting or by veering so far off that you start wondering why the real crime was used at all. Katherine Kovacic's debut novel manages to stay in between the two extremes and to create a novel that can stand on its own while still being tied to a real crime (the Ned Kelly Awards acknowledged that - she did not win the First Novel award in her year but she got on the short list).

Alex Clayton is an art dealer in Melbourne with a knack of finding neglected canvases and recognizing the hand of masters when noone else does. That allows her to live pretty comfortably and makes her pretty popular with her customers. The novel opens in 1999 when Alex finds another of those undervalued art pieces and recognizes it as the portrait of Molly Dean - a young woman who had been brutally killed in the 1930s when she was the muse of a major local artist. She buys the canvas, goes home with it and before long weird things start happening - someone seems to really want the picture - and is not very choosy in the manner of acquiring it. Which makes Alex decide to keep the picture a lot longer than she usually would have - with predictable results.

The novel runs in two timelines - the 1999 story of Alex, trying not to get killed for the portrait, and 1930 - the last days of Molly Dean. I know next to nothing about the art scene in Melbourne (in the 30s or nowadays) but the sections set in the 30s paint a picture that makes you feel like you know them - the characters come alive to the point where the ones in 1999 seem less developed than they really are. While Alex is looking for clues about what happened and what causes her issues almost 7 decades later, we see the actual story in the past. I had some issues with how the author ordered the novel - in some cases in an attempt not to spoil the old story, we do not get enough of a connection to the current times but overall the structure works.

Setting the current times in 1999 (despite being written in 2018) is intentional - it forces Alex to do proper research (or somewhat proper) - as much as I like our world, a lot of what happened cannot really happen in 2018. Plus the number of years between the two times is important - 1999 allows for some of the people who were alive to still be around; 2018 will be pushing it.

I looked up some of the facts used by Kovacic to build the Melbourne art world in both timelines and they check out - she adds some new characters in the past (and explains some of her creative changes in the real facts in her afterword) but the rest is historically true. The Molly Dean murder was never solved in real life; in Kovacic's story not only we know (and see) the murderer but we also find why it was done. It is not an attempt to claim a solution for the real life mystery - it is a novel after all (a biography of Molly Dean was published around the same time as well by Gideon Haigh).

And if the art story and the double timeline is not enough, Kovacic introduces us to the art conservator John Porter and her dog, Hogarth - the secondary characters who make the 1999 timeline feel like a real one and not just a basis for the 1930 one to run in.

Apparently this novel is the beginning of a series and I am planning to check the next novels. Looking at the author's site, she just published a non-fiction book as well - a true crime record of another Melbourne historical murder which was mentioned in the novel (as it had some connection to the investigation of Molly's at the time). ( )

Nice to read a book set in Melbourne- both in 1930 and 1999.
Art mystery - Hogarth the wolfhound has a star role! ( )

I enjoyed this very much, although I thought the 1999 chapters were more interesting than those from 1930. Alex was a great heroine, and her dog Hogarth was also a strong character. The information the author subtly included about art sales was a bonus, and I got very invested in Alex's bidding at the auction at the beginning. I think I had been hoping for some massive twist at the end, but other than that the plot was well-done. Extra credit for the author choosing not to portray Alex putting herself in harm's way unnecessarily. Instead she acted professionally, took advice, protected herself and the artwork and emerged triumphant. ( )

The author tells us in notes at the back of the book that "The events in this novel are based on the 1930 murder of Mary 'Molly' Winifred Dean... While Alex Clayton and her contemporaries were all entirely fictitious, most of Molly's close associates were real people."

So I guess you would label this as "faction" - a true crime, a real setting, but many fictitious characters, and action, and an imagined resolution.

I initially found the book slow reading - I attributed that to a style that made you want to ensure that you understood everything. We knew from the very beginning that Molly had been murdered.

The action comes in two time frames: 1999 when Alex Clayton buys a painting and decides to find out more about the subject Molly Dean; and 1930 before Molly died. The text switches back and forth as we weigh the evidence that Alex gives us.

Here is chance to get in on the ground floor of a new Australian series with an intriguing pair of investigators. Two more titles have been published to date, and I shall certainly be following them up. ( )