The Vanishing Point (Andrea Hotere, Ultimo)

Journalist and researcher Andrea Hotere has put her investigative skills to work in The Vanishing Point: a dual-timeline historical mystery novel concerning Diego Velázquez’s 1656 royal portrait, Las Meninas. In 17th-century Madrid, the Infanta Margarita watches the court of her father Philip IV deteriorate under political and personal pressures, while Velázquez’s jealous cousin De Nieto becomes entangled with the Inquisition. Three hundred years later, we meet Alex, an intern at the prestigious Courtauld Institute of Art at the University of London. Her mother was an art historian whose research into the secrets contained in Las Meninas was cut short by her suspicious death. Retracing her mother’s footsteps, Alex must evade the efforts of those working to keep her findings from coming to light. If the reader is willing to occasionally suspend their disbelief (of ghosts and demon-worshippers, but also of the way the clues sometimes fall into Alex’s lap), they’ll enjoy a multilayered adventure that shares similarities with another Gothic Spanish mystery: Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s The Shadow of the Wind. Art and antiques lovers will relish descriptions of lamplit shops stuffed with elephant feet and armoires, and of the grand halls of Christie’s auction house and the Museo del Prado. By imagining the dramatic contextual detail surrounding the making of some of Velázquez’s most famous portraits, Hotere ensures her readers will never again look at a centuries-old painting without wondering about the lives and secrets of the figures on the canvas.

Books+Publishing reviewer: Megan Koch is a writer and bookseller based in Adelaide. Books+Publishing is Australia’s number-one source of pre-publication book reviews.

Category: Reviews