Business partners and art collectors Clayton Reed and Fred Taylor try to avoid both the law and several adversaries when another collector is murdered hours after they buy a valuable painting from him. Reprint.

Harmony in Flesh and Black

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Kilmer, Nicholas

Mystery

Harpercollins

Oona, a Boston art shop proprietress, offers Fred a painting, the image of a common grey squirrel on a chain, which he discovers has been cut from a larger canvas. Believing it to be the work of an important eighteenth-century American master, he snaps up the fragment & then sets out to find the rest of the painting. Murder, mayhem, & other forms of vandalism soon join the violence already associated with the painting

Man With a Squirrel

Literature & Fiction

Action & Adventure

Blackstone Audio,Inc.

Nicholas Kilmer's Harmony in Flesh and Black exposes a deep knowledge of the sometimes tricky and treacherous haut monde of art dealers, collectors, and curators. Smartly tailored, well-to-do Beacon Hill collector Clayton Reed has habits so refined that he doesn't even venture out to pick up his own acquisitions. He leaves that sort of work to Fred Taylor, a veteran of clandestine action in Southeast Asia who is presently working as Reed's factotum. A passionate noncollector, Fred researches possible purchases and fights for them at auction - but he is really more interested in his blossoming relationship with Molly Riley, an independent-minded Cambridge librarian. In this series debut, Reed suspects that there may be a Vermeer painting worth millions lying underneath the oils of an unexciting nineteenth-century landscape. Tension mounts as he and Fred try to keep the vultures away and their hunch to themselves before auction. Meanwhile, Reed buys an unsigned nude smacking of 1890s Paris - it could be a Whistler, something he might have titled Harmony in Flesh and Black - from a down-and-out porno photographer who is soon afterward found murdered on the floor of his filthy studio. Their success depends on keeping a low profile, but now Clayton and Fred are in danger of being implicated in a very sleazy crime which may at best jeopardize their plans to get the Vermeer, and at worst put their lives in danger.

United States

Henry Holt Co.

In the sequel to Harmony in Flesh and Black, Fred Taylor stumbles upon a fragment recently cut from an eighteenth-century painting and sets out to find the remainder of the painting, but in doing so he crosses the path of a con artist who deals with former victims of Satanic cults.

A Place in Normandy

Chronicles the author's purchase and reconstruction of his family's farmhouse in Normandy and his collisions with plumbers, owls, France, food, laundry, and the hardware store

Travel

Europe

Called in to identify a seventeenth-century painting of Christ in Agony, Fred Taylor also finds himself involved in the investigation of a murder and the question of whether a fake painting can be responsible for a series of miracles

O Sacred Head (Fred Taylor Mystery)

A cache of old erotic paintings is purchased clandestinely at a benefit seaside auction, under the noses of competing dealers and of Westport, Massachusetts, would-be high society. When word gets out that these pictures may illuminate the dark side of a major artist, Boston collector Clayton Reed and his agent Fred Taylor must provide a cloak of respectability for the collection and then def it from the increasingly violent enthusiasm of others who suspect its value only after the sale. How did the late Lord Hanford come to have such pictures? What of his sudden death? What about that young and lovely American widow? As the nature of the collection is revealed, so too its dubious history which leads from murder and double-dealing in the margins of the Boston and London art world, back through time until a shocking crime of Victorian prudery is laid bare. Fred Taylor embarks on his most complex, literate, and page-turning mystery to date.

dirty linen

Henry Holt and Co.

Holt Paperbacks

Fred Taylor, a veteran of unspecified clandestine services that have caused him to spend hard times in Southeast Asia, finds himself at loose ends in Boston. A late-night chance encounter in the city's Beacon Hill area throws his lot in with eccentric art collector Clayton Reed. Reed has been tricked by a young man as unscrupulous as he is ignorant into examining and considering for purchase a collection of paintings whose presence in the U.S. seems, at best, informal. Fred, sensing Reed's naiveti in matters of personal security, volunteers to guarantee that security at the same time as Reed's acumen as a connoisseur astounds Fred. How could Reed just walk away from the situation with what he later gloatingly describes as ""a prize worth more than the gross domestic product of Bulgaria."" What Reed has purchased appears to be a painting by one of the most important artists of the Italian Renaissance. But is it what it seems Can The Madonna of the Apes be a forgery How did it come to be, so quietly, in Boston These questions propel Reed and Fred into an increasingly murderous tangle, guided only by the assurances of a sequence of art dealers who lie as easily as they withhold the truth about the painting, its true nature, and its history. Nicholas Kilmer is the author of five previous Fred Taylor art mysteries.

Madonna of the Apes (A Fred Taylor Art Mystery)

Poisoned Pen Pr

Fred Taylor, a veteran of unspecified clandestine services that have caused him to spend hard times in Southeast Asia, finds himself at loose ends in Boston. A late-night chance encounter in the city's Beacon Hill area throws his lot in with eccentric art collector Clayton Reed. Reed has been tricked by a young man as unscrupulous as he is ignorant into examining and considering for purchase a collection of paintings whose presence in the U.S. seems, at best, informal.Fred, sensing Reed's naiveti in matters of personal security, volunteers to guarantee that security at the same time as Reed's acumen as a connoisseur astounds Fred. How could Reed just walk away from the situation with what he later gloatingly describes as ""a prize worth more than the gross domestic product of Bulgaria.""What Reed has purchased appears to be a painting by one of the most important artists of the Italian Renaissance. But is it what it seems Can The Madonna of the Apes be a forgery How did it come to be, so quietly, in Boston These questions propel Reed and Fred into an increasingly murderous tangle, guided only by the assurances of a sequence of art dealers who lie as easily as they withhold the truth about the painting, its true nature, and its history.Nicholas Kilmer is the author of five previous Fred Taylor art mysteries.

Madonna of the Apes (Art Mysteries)

Poisoned Pen Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Kilmer, Nicholas. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Kilmer, Nicholas

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Kilmer, Nicholas. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Harmony in Flesh and Black

Man With a Squirrel

Harmony in Flesh and Black

Man With a Squirrel

A Place in Normandy

O Sacred Head (Fred Taylor Mystery)

dirty linen

A Place in Normandy

Madonna of the Apes (A Fred Taylor Art Mystery)

Madonna of the Apes (Art Mysteries)