8 Mysteries About Art and Murder

Dr. Gul Delani’s teenage niece, Mahnaz, has been missing for three years, but she has not given up hope that Mahnaz may return one day. When Dr. Delani is woken up in the middle of the night by the police, she hopes it might be news. Instead, the police share that they have just made a huge drug bust and found a mummy and a sarcophagus. They’ve called her in because she is the curator of the Museum of Heritage and History in Karachi, Pakistan. No one knows why the mummy was there, and Delani is ready to get to the bottom of the mystery.

This is the first book in the Art of Murder Mystery series, and it’s especially great for fans of modern art.

It’s 1943, and the New York City art scene is in shock when one of their own is found murdered. Famous Cuban artist Wilfredo Lam was found by French Surrealist artist and writer Andre Breton. Lam’s corpse has been arranged in pieces, alluding to the famous Surrealist game “An Exquisite Corpse.” The manner of the crime suggests that someone in the world of art may be responsible for this grotesque death. Detective Patrick Dillon, alongside Officers Brian Fitzgerald and Anita Diaz, are assigned to the case. Welcome to the strange world of avant-garde in 1940s New York City.

Fans of historical mysteries, this one’s for you. Told through 176 letters in 1557 Florence, Italy, artist and author of the Lives of the Artists, Giorgio Vasari, has been brought in to solve the shocking murder of artist Jacopo da Pontormo. He was found in the Basilica di San Lorenzo in Florence beneath the frescoes he was working on. Even more scandalous, the authorities find a painting in his studio, which shows Duke Cosimo de ‘Medici’s daughter Maria’s face on the body of Venus. Vasari has to get to the bottom of the artist’s death and this artistic scandal.

Maggie Richter hopes that the outrageous exhibition of Kim Lord’s work will help save the Rocque Museum. Lord is known for her daring artwork; this exhibition titled “Still Lives” does not disappoint. Taking a page out of photographer and artist Cindy Sherman’s book, Lord shows images of herself as a murdered woman, like Nicole Brown Simpson and the Black Dahlia. But when Lord does not show up to her own opening night, people are not worried that something might be wrong. Maggie finds herself drawn into Lord’s disappearance and the art world’s dark underbelly. There’s a companion to this book that came out in 2021 called Lesson in Red.

This may be one of the more unique entries on the list. Described as mystery-horror, this book focuses on nine line drawings, each of which holds a clue to a mystery. Instead of a detective analyzing the clues, you, the reader, are presented with several puzzle pieces and have to figure out how they all work together.

A master forger in Buenos Aires has been forging the work of Mariette Lydis, a famous portraitist. No one knows who this forger is, and there are rumors that it is a woman. An unnamed narrator who works at an auction house has decided to find out who this mysterious person is and why they’ve resorted to a life of forgery. But this is no straightforward mystery. The narrator has to pull different threads, tell lies, and manipulate others in order to find snippets about the life of this mysterious forger.

In this recent work in translation, a group of acquaintances are invited to the remote Water Mill House, owned by Fujinuma Kiichi, the son of a famous artist. Ever since being in a car accident, he has lived alone in the castle-like mansion wearing a rubber mask. But when a painting goes missing and bodies begin to drop, the detective Shimada Kiyoshi has to figure out who is responsible for these seemingly impossible deaths. This book is an example of “Honkaku”: a genre of Japanese mysteries that focuses on fair play/deduction, often featuring impossible or locked room crimes.

First published in 1968, this series focuses on an art teacher who is described as a sort of parody of Miss Marple. When Miss Seeton leaves the opera, she sees an altercation that leads to the death of a young woman. When the police come, Miss Seeton can’t describe the attacker, but she can draw him. The next day, she moves into a small village to start her retired life, but when her involvement in the case is revealed in the media, she finds herself the target of several murder attempts. She has to use her wits and special skills to find out who wants her to put her pencil and pen down for good. There are 24 books and one prequel in the Miss Seeton series.