The Flanders Panel | 
 enlarge | Author: Arturo Perez-reverte
Creator: Margaret Jull Costa
Publisher: Harvest Books
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
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Rating:  134 reviews
Media: Paperback
Pages: 304
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.9
ISBN: 0156029588
Dewey Decimal Number: 863.64
EAN: 9780156029582
Publication Date: June 7, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com Review
Julia, a young Madrid art restorer, is pulled into a shadowy world of metaphor when she discovers a long-covered inscription on a Flemish painting: Who killed the knight? Art, chess and murder are intertwined in this elegant, seductive mystery in the manner of The Name of the Rose.
Product Description
A fifteenth-century painting by a Flemish master is about to be auctioned when Julia, a young art restorer, discovers a peculiar inscription hidden in a corner: Who killed the knight? In the painting, the Duke of Flanders and his knight are locked in a game of chess, and a dark lady lurks mysteriously in the background. Julia is determined to solve the five-hundred-year-old murder, but as she begins to look for clues, several of her friends in the art world are brutally murdered in quick succession. Messages left with the bodies suggest a crucial connection between the chess game in the painting, the knight's murder, the sordid underside of the contemporary art world, and the latest deaths. Just when all of the players in the mystery seem to be pawns themselves, events race toward a shocking conclusion. A thriller like no other, The Flanders Panel presents a tantalizing puzzle for any connoisseur of mystery, chess, art, and history.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 95 more reviews...
 I read this for a spanish project. And that's the only time it should be read. November 8, 2008
TSTET
The Flanders Panel is about an art restorer by the name of Julia who happens upon a painting done by the Dutch artist Van Huys. The premise of the story as said on the back of the book is that by obtaining this painting it leads her into "a modern-day game of sin, betrayal, and death." When I first read this I was fairly excited about reading this book. After all mystery books are one of my favorite types of books. However, this book was a huge let down. It felt like it was gearing it self up to go somewhere even though it was 200 pages into the story. And when everything is said and done the end leaves you with a big, "Why?". Not even more so, a why geared towards the story. But more or less a why geared towards, "Why was this book even written, why does this exist, and why did I waste my time reading this." The ending is lackluster, and the only charming character in it is a character that more or less lacks character and treats everything non-compassionately. In retrospect I would say that the book can be defined by my previous statement. Ironic. It lays the foundation for something great but then leaves it there in the open, letting you know what it could be but never following through on it. This is the first book I've ever read by Arturo Perez-Reverte but if their other books are anything like this one than I would avoid them at all costs.
 Disappointing.... October 31, 2008
MLRapp (NJ)
"....Each game of Chess means there's one less variation left to be played. Each day got through means one or two less mistakes left to be made......And in the end we see a game that stated by mistake in Hindustan, and boosted in the main by what is now Iran, become the simplest and most complicated pleasure yet derived for just the kind of mind who would apprecaite this well-researched and fascinating yarn." (Chess, The Musical, "The Story of Chess")
While I am truly fascinated by Chess, and its implications in life, death, and murder/mysteries such as this one, based upon the discovery of a hidden incription in an ancient painting, I was utterly disappointed by The Flanders Panel and can't recommend it. Although I am not a chess afficionado, I had no trouble understanding the references, descriptions and strategies employed throughout the novel. However I believe this novel requires a reader of somewhat elevated intelligence to even get through it. It is extremely slow and somewhat boring in its lengthy and repetitive dicta and perhaps is meant truly for chess masters who probably have much more patience than this reader.
 Loved it! July 21, 2008
alpha_grrl (Olympia, WA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
"The Flanders Panel" was the first Perez-Reverte book I read, and as soon as I finished it, I was ready for more! I found the setting of the story to be very believable as far as the art restoration and museum milieu. I liked the main character, Julia, and I was fascinated by the mystery inside a mystery of the painting. The writing is very atmospheric, you can almost feel and smell things as they are described. I'm not a chess player, so the details of the game that are part of the mystery were lost on me, but I didn't feel as though I was missing the story because of it. After a lot of suspense is built, the conclusion is somewhat disappointing, the motive is weak, but I liked the story anyway.
Unexpectedly Flat after a Good Start May 11, 2008
Stuart W. Mirsky (New York, USA)
I generally like Perez-Reverte's work, finding him interesting both philosophically and as a writer (albeit with some quirks and foibles which I tend not to hold against him since, lacking fluency in Spanish, I am inevitably reading him in translation). But this is the third time I've been disappointed in one of his books and I'm beginning to think perhaps I should reassess him.
This one starts out with a rather intriguing premise, an art restorer finds a hidden inscription concealed under a layer of paint on a late medieval painting she has been commissioned to spruce up. "Who killed the knight?" the inscription reads in Latin.
The painting, of two men playing a game of chess with an enigmatic young woman, dressed in black sitting demurely if mysteriously in the background, shows the older man with a chess piece in his hand (the white knight) and the younger player brooding over the board. As Julia, the art restorer, muses, the term "killed" in the inscription could also be read as "took," as in "who took the knight?" in the course of the game. But a little investigation soon reveals to Julia that one of the players had actually been assassinated before the painting was painted and the game is soon afoot.
As Julia scrambles to understand the implications of the inscription, in hopes that its story will enhance the value of the painting for the art broker who commissioned her, bloody murder suddenly rears its head and soon Julia is drawn into a vortex of fear and suspicion as she and some friends (one old, one new) scramble to unpack the mystery of the centuries old murder which, Julia is convinced, will reveal the perpetrator of the contemporary murder.
To do so it's not only necessary for Julia and her companions to research the history of the painting, they must find a way to play out the chess game depicted on the painted panel from Flanders itself for, as they soon realize, the murderer knows their every move and is playing along with them -- and the murders (for the first one is not the last) may be finally explicable in the way the game is played out.
The first half of the book is fairly tight though, as others have noted here, the characters are not well developed and, in fact, are fairly stereotypical, though Perez-Reverte does manage to give them vitality if not genuine depth. Julia, herself, seems oddly passive and naive for someone as worldly as she is supposed to be.
But the greatest flaw of this book lies in the mystery. Aside from the strain to credulity it takes to think a centuries old mystery, with no obvious connections to the modern characters in the story, has implications for the current murder and mayhem, it is even stranger to suggest that a game of chess, played out in the abstract, has a bearing on what is going on among people with little or no reason to know what moves are being made.
The idea, of course, is that the killer is using the game (first played backward and then forward) to tell those who are trying to decipher the point of the inscription just who will be killed next. But why? There ought to be a very strong reason for this, or why should the killer go to such lengths?
The great weakness of the book lies precisely in this conundrum for there seems to be no rhyme or reason for the killings themselves, no intrinsic connection to the painting and thus it becomes apparent way too soon just who the killer must be. I shall say no more of this for fear of giving the story away except to note that by the first third of the book the killer's identity becomes fairly obvious and it is a wonder those who are most engaged in the "chase" apparently fail to see it until much later. Moreover, the killer's motivation, when finally revealed, seems rather odd, to say the least -- not inexplicable but an awful lot of trouble to go to in order to accomplish what, in the end, is a more or less prosaic goal.
Perez-Reverte, in my view, has done much better elsewhere (The Fencing Master is my favorite). While this one kept me reading diligently for about the first half, I only managed to finish it out of a sense of literary duty. By the time of the denouement, my only question was how the author would manage to explain it all and, alas, I think he didn't quite do so. He ended with an artfully philosophical flourish but I didn't have the feeling I'd been through any kind of adventure at all and the chess game, which had fascinated me for much of the story, seemed a tiresome device on which to hang the murders by the end. It was hard to care much about those killed or those in danger or those engaged in the ferreting out of the mysterious killer.
Still, Perez-Reverte always exhibits a certain intellectual elegance and erudition when he writes and is enjoyable for that. This was better than The Nautical Chart and, certainly, superior to his third Alatriste novel. I'll probably continue to read him but I do find myself wondering at his popularity in Europe and in some quarters in the U.S. after reading this one. I have to wonder, too, if the appearance of erudition is not often as important to some as the real thing.
SWM
author of The King of Vinland's Saga
I must be stupid or something May 3, 2008
Kaye B. Stover (crescent city, ca. United States)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Given that I'm not a certified academic; given that I'm only a novice chess player, I nevertheless don't understand the rave reviews given to this book from the New York Times clear down to newspapers like the San Jose Mercury.
Excuse me, idiot though I am, I could not buy into the whole premise of how or why some supposedly unknown and presumably strange persons would have knowledge of or interest in, the 'Van Huys' painting that the character, Julia, is restoring.
Jumping a few spaces ahead to where Cesar hooks Julia up with Munoz, why would chess master Munoz consent to playing the mystery opponent's game?
As I have stated, I am a chess novice, and a woman to boot, yet it seems clear to me that White should be in control of the game and that I can figure out better moves than those which were played in the book's game.
Furthermore, I wouldn't have consented to play the mystery oppenants game, nor can I understand Cesar's motivations.
None of it makes sense to me.
And while I read this book to the finish, I am an insomniac and will read anything I can lay my hands on at night.
I would like to see a veteran chess player comment regarding the chess game represented in this book.
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