As I work my way through the backlog of free books I’ve been acquiring through online deals, I found that I’d arrived at two books in a row about art experts. The last one was Aaron Elkins’ A Glancing Light (review a few inches down), which I liked quite a lot. I liked Neil Howarth’s The Fabled Falcon too, at the beginning, but my enjoyment faded as the story proceeded.
Darius Fletcher (known as “Fletch,” not to be confused with Gregory McDonald’s American “Fletch” character) is a former soldier and a former convict. Now he’s a professor of art at the (fictional) Canterbury University in England. His college is funded by the slightly shady Bancroft Foundation. Fletch is a little shady himself, providing occasional help to an art forger friend, but he genuinely loves art in itself.
One day while he’s lecturing, he looks out at his audience and sees a man there who is not a student. That man turns out to be dead. Fletch recognizes him, though – he’s Francis, a young man with whom he recently worked on an archaeological dig on Malta. Francis had confided to him that he’d discovered something fantastic – a signed painting by the master Caravaggio, who only signed one other known work.
Though Fletch is briefly detained by the police, the Bancroft Foundation quickly secures his release, and sends him off to Malta to find out what’s happened to Francis’ discovery. What he doesn’t yet know – but will soon discover – is that this treasure is being sought by competing sinister, ruthless, and deep-pocketed interests. Teaming up with a beautiful Russian Interpol agent, Fletch does his best to stay one step ahead of them, following cryptic clues to uncover ancient secrets.
If all this suggests to you parallels with Dan Brown and Indiana Jones, you’re not wrong. For this reader, the book steadily lost credibility as mystical and supernatural elements began to intrude – implicitly, at least. I probably would be okay with it if those supernatural elements were Christian, but here the flavor is explicitly Gnostic.
On top of that, there was a definite Hollywood approach, not only in the Fighting Girl Boss character of the Interpol agent, but also in the hero’s tendency to quickly heal from injuries and come back battle-ready.
So all in all, I was disappointed with The Fabled Falcon. It was heretical and implausible (but I repeat myself).