The Burnt Orange Heresy

Willeford's interrogation of the battle between Christianity and Platonism with Sophistic postmodernism is so concretely placed within Miami's seething Bohemian art world as a rotten critic takes on the sacred role of art in our society and has to confront the massive realm of the western aesthetic clear back to the Renaissance shows what a powerful mind Willeford had built for himself. Forget Joyce and Umberto Eco. Willeford's the man to show us the problems of relativism, and the importance of Kantian aesthetic judgment in creating a lasting culture. Delhi, NY

Not just another of Willeford's highly acidic novels observing human nature, The Burnt Orange Heresy is also a brilliant send-up of modern art -- in fact it brings up several questions about the nature of art itself. I am always happy when some poor misguided publisher tries to rerelease vintage Willeford material. You've gotta buy this book. Really.

Best known for his Hoke Moseley novels, Willeford was also a painter. Here he brings the art world to a crime novel and renders a work that is sort of Crime and Punishment as rewritten by James M. Cain and Tom Wolfe. James Figueras is a low rent art critic. He's wangled a posting to Palm Beach but he's saddled with dim prospects and an annoying girlfriend, Berenice Hollis. He's on the lookout for his one big break and it comes when he receives information that one of the most influential, but enigmatic, artists of the Twentieth Century has moved to Florida. A big collector offers to tell him where to find the artist, Jacques Debierue, if he'll steal one of the artist's works in exchange for the information. In addition to a deftly rendered crime novel, Willeford proceeds to treat us to a devastatingly funny send up of Modern Art and the pseudo-intellectual theories that spawned it. A hoot.

This is a fun book but it is not a mystery. I think it is classified as a mystery because so much of Willeford's work is mystery genre. This book is more a commentary on modern art and its adherents.

"The Burnt Orange Heresy" is Willeford's most fascinating work; the fact that it's out of print is a real pity. In this novel about a corrupt Miami art critic who favors menthol cigarettes, pegged trousers, and buxom blondes, and who talks about his career as his "racket," Willeford expands the traditional limits of crime writing. There are some very amusing asides about art and art history -- subjects the author knew well, having been a failed painter himself -- and the psychological suspense remains taut throughout, even if the killing itself seems a little far-fetched. Even so, the invention of an expatriate French surrealist living in the Everglades is a bold move for a writer known for a noir palette.Please reprint this book!