Now a major motion picture directed by Giuseppe Capotondi, with Claes Bang, Elizabeth Debicki, Mick Jagger and Donald Sutherland
“A spiky romance laced with art-history references and the trappings of a sleekly elegant neo-noir.”
—The Hollywood Reporter
Fast-talking, backstabbing, womanizing, and fiercely ambitious art critic James Figueras will do anything—blackmail, burglary, and beyond—to make a name for himself. When an unscrupulous collector offers Figueras a career-making chance to interview Jacques Debierue, the greatest living—and most reclusive—artist, the critic must decide how far he will go to become the art-world celebrity he hungers to be. Will Figueras stop at the opportunity to skim some cream for himself or push beyond morality’s limits to a bigger payoff?
Crossing the art world with the underworld, Willeford creates a novel of dark hue and high aesthetic polish. The Burnt Orange Heresy—the 1970s crime classic now back in print—has lost none of its savage delights as it re-creates the making of a murderer, calmly and with exquisite tension, while satirizing the workings of the art world as the ultimate con.
Praise
“No one writes a better crime novel than Charles Willeford.”Elmore Leonard
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“Charles Willeford is a singular, radical voice in fiction.”New York Times Book Review, “By the Book”, George Pelecanos
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“I was in college at Columbia, my friend Luc Sante and I used to argue with academics about the hierarchy...We love Dante, but we love Charles Willeford, too.”Jim Jarmusch
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“I don’t do neo-noir. I see Pulp Fiction as closer to modern-day crime fiction, a little closer to Charles Willeford . . . Willeford is doing his own thing with his own characters, creating a whole environment . . .”Sight & Sound interview with Manohla Dargis, Quentin Tarantino
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