Charles Willeford's The Burnt Orange Heresy

Hardboiled legend Charles Willeford was a Miami journalist and author whose 1990 novel, Miami Blues, was a big hit and was made into a movie starring Alec Baldwin.

But long before that, Willeford's career as a painter and an art history teacher, brilliantly positioned him to write his 1970 novel, The Burnt Orange Heresy.

James Figueras is a prominent south Florida art critic. He is brilliant at his work. So brilliant, in fact, that he is one of the few people in the US who makes a living exclusively writing art critiques for academic journals, magazines and encyclopedias.

His renown draws the attention of Cassidy, a high rolling millionaire art collector who lets him in on a secret. Cassidy has assisted the reclusive French surrealist artist Jacques Debierue in settling down in Florida. In fact, he's now living only thirty miles away. Cassidy lets James have the reclusive and secretive artist's address on one condition: he must bring back one of the artist's current art works.

James leaps at the offer. He has to. After all, Debierue was one of the most important of the Surrealists, legendary for his No. One installation, a wooden picture frame placed on a cracked plaster wall. Now, the legend was literally in his backyard. He has to meet him.

With his girlfriend Berenice in tow, James meets the surrealist, who turns out to be a harmless, even charming old man who wants nothing more from life than to sip orange juice and to wander off to a nearby drive-in to watch old Bowery Boys movies. He also wants to be left alone. And he wants no one to see his current work. No one. Not even the great James Figueras, whose criticism Debierue admires very much.

His considerable ego and hubris piqued by the rebuff, James hatches a plot to see the artist's current work. When Debierue leaves his house for the drive-in one night, James goes to the house and is able to get into the artist's workshop. He finds...nothing. Many canvases and frames, many painting supplies and implements, but no art work. Nothing. Debierue has not painted anything since his arrival in Florida. Perhaps, James fears, he hasn't painted anything in many years.

At first horrified, James suddenly realizes that he now has a real opportunity to boost his own career, and, almost as an afterthought, Debierue's. He snaps up the artist's gear, sets fire to the studio and then meets up with Berenice and they get away. All the while, James's mind is convulsed by a scheme to unleash on the art world The Burnt Orange Heresy, Debierue's last major art work. James will make the painting and write an article celebrating it. Then, Cassidy and other collectors can move in and fight over it, driving up its already immense value.

One problem though. Berenice uncovers James's scheme and James goes into murderous overdrive.

The Burnt Orange Heresy is a slim novel, but it is jammed with ideas about art and money, art and the perception of reality, art and the criminal impulse. It is also a meticulous depiction of how one man's arrogance and professional pride turn into murderous psychosis. A chilling and profound and original hard boiled read.