Richer than Croesus and sicker than Lazarus, Laverne Taubman
prefers to die slowly from gum infections rather than allow anyone
to look inside her mouth. After the bizarre murder of painter Frank
Spira's former lover, Jacob Grossman, obsessed Spira biographer
Nicholas Greer learns that Taubman may hold clues to Spira's
missing and mysterious masterwork, Incarnation.

Greer is ushered to Taubman's bedside hoping for answers, but
receives only anger as Taubman becomes incensed over the same
subject that caused Grossman to break his own nose against a
mirror. Her last words to him about Incarnation --- "He died for
it, and you will, too" --- nonetheless fail to convince the
less-than-successful writer to cease his search for the
painting.

Taubman is just one of the finely detailed characters in Joseph
Geary's assured first novel, SPIRAL. Another is Tony Reardon, who
is also one of the "Spira's Lovers" Greer contracts to write about
for the New York Times. Still another is the shabby police
officer who interviews Greer since he was Grossman's last visitor
and made a recording of their conversation. When the NYPD target
Greer as a suspect, everyone soon realizes that the shabby officer
was someone completely different.

It's difficult to describe any other steps in or stages of Geary's
plot without threatening to rob readers of their own pleasure in
being sucked into his fictional vortex. The author combines a
chilling study of high-stakes high art dealing with a murder
mystery, an action story, and a portrait of an artist as a young
madman --- not to mention the portrait of another artist, Greer,
watching his life and psyche unravel as his involvement with
Incarnation deepens.

Broke and alone (his wife leaves him early on), Greer has been
researching Spira for six years. With his 900-page biography
finished and on an important publisher's desk, he at last stands
the chance of success. But after interviewing the long-missing
Grossman and learning that a work Spira created in Tangier in 1957
may still exist, Nick uncovers a series of sex, lies, and even
videotape (well, 8mm film). As he begins to understand the
significance of Spira's great work, he also comes under scrutiny
from Oscar Nagel, an important Spira collector.

Geary keeps the pace up, moving between New York, London and
Tangier, as Greer becomes more entangled in shady art-world
dealings and more confused by Spira's even shadier past. So often,
suspense and thriller protagonists are fabulously polished humans
destined to meet and love other fabulously polished specimens of
the opposite sex during their adventures. Nicholas Greer is
anything but polished; he would be more accurately described as
shambling and disheveled. He is also disorganized, jealous of the
competition, and ill-prepared for the events and people he
encounters.

Geary also manages a delicate balance between scenes of Greer's
search, the NYPD's investigation, and Nagel's machinations,
alternating scenes of furious momentum with those of slow
frustration. The dénouement will fascinate even readers who
have cannily deduced Spira's (and Taubman's, among others) chilling
secret. Waiting for Geary's next book will seem slower than death
by dental abscess.