Moon over Tangier

August 4, 2014
In Law's irresistibly readable third and final Francis Bacon mystery (after 2013's Prisoner of the Rivera), the Anglo-Irish figurative painter and bon vivant follows his on-again-off-again lover, David, to post-WWII Tangier, Moroccoâa paradise of "pretty boys who swanned along the beachfront or lived in the brothels or haunted alleyways." It's also a hotbed of smugglers, spies, and revolutionaries. Bacon soon finds himself an unwilling accomplice in the local police commissioner's ill-conceived scheme to entrap a gallery owner suspected of killing an art forger whom he was doing business with. While the resourceful Bacon barely avoids being murdered, he finds himself in the crosshairs of the KGB, the international police, and a recently bereaved widow bent of revenge. Exotic locales, adept characterization, an intriguing historical backdrop, and brisk pacing make this novel highly entertainingâbut it's Law's witty, promiscuous, and refreshingly candid sleuth that makes it so memorable.