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Title: With a Gem-Like Flame: A Novel of Venice and a Lost Masterpiece by David Adams Cleveland ISBN: 0-7867-0877-8 Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub. Date: 10 July, 2001 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.00

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Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (6 reviews)

Rating: 4
Summary: good tale of venice
Comment: great read, lots of good stuff about venice

Rating: 5
Summary: Not another art-crime detective novel
Comment: When I tell you that this book revolves around a long-thought-lost Raphael painting, and one man's attempt to buy it and discover its secrets, not necessarily in that order, you'd be forgiven for thinking that you know what you're in for -- another art-crime detective novel. But you'd be wrong and, like me, pleasantly surprised. For this book stresses the art above the crime, and is far more about the man on its trail, than the twists in the trail. And the lost Raphael Madonna is so lovingly described you know why he becomes obsessed. And there's a fair bit of raunchy sex, too, with a woman he meets and enlists, and you can see why he'd want her as well. Along with the art and the sex there's Venice, oh and they eat ice cream - what more can you ask for? The prose style hits a few purple patches at the start, but soon settles down, with some fine business around our hero's mental state and life view. He's an odd, but believable, cove, who's sensitive to art but a bit of a bastard, and more than somewhat of a cynic. You'll care, I think, and be moved to visit Venice, eat ice cream, and...well, the rest's up to you. Historical note: this novel mentions that the famous and swanky Hotel Bauer Grunwald was the Nazi's hotel of choice during WWII and that the Gestapo used it for torturing. I assume that this is an historical fact, but it's not mentioned on their web-page, funnily enough.

Rating: 5
Summary: "Gem-Like Flame" Is a Gem
Comment: Though this is nominally a mystery novel, it really is a tour de force of erudition, diabolical intrigue, raunchiness and sexiness. One need not be knowledgable about the art world--which this reviewer certainly is not--to be swept up in David Adams Cleveland's tour through the art and architecture of Renaissance Venice and his portrayal of the international cast of eccentrics and evildoers (dating back to Nazi Germany) who would own Venice's treasures. As a writer, Cleveland deploys with equal facility the elevated prose of the art world and the grittier language of the back channels of Venice. It adds up to fast and riveting reading.

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