Author Guest Post with Claudia Riess: To Kingdom Come

Amateur sleuths, Erika Shawn-Wheatley, art magazine editor, and Harrison Wheatley, art history professor, attend a Zoom meeting of individuals from around the globe whose common goal is to expedite the return of African art looted during the colonial era.

Welcome to the June 22nd stop on the blog tour for To Kingdom Come by Claudia Riess with Goddess Fish Promotions. Be sure to follow the rest of the tour for spotlights, reviews, more guest posts, and a giveaway! More on that at the end of this post.

Please note that this post contains affiliate links, which means there is no additional cost to you if you shop using my links, but I will earn a small percentage in commission. A program-specific disclaimer is at the bottom of this post.

Author Guest Post

Living and Learning Art

Because I’m writing an art history mystery series, I’m sometimes asked where I earned my degree(s) in the subject.  The answer is: nowhere.  In college I majored in Philosophy and minored in English.  One of my responsibilities working for The New Yorker was to choose what drawings (“spots”) would appear in each issue and on what page.  This is probably the closest I came to plumbing the depths of the art world during my years of working in the field of publishing.  In truth, my knowledge—and love—of art and art history began with excursions to all the Brooklyn and Manhattan museums in early childhood, and is bound up in an organic sense to family. My father favored representational art; my mother argued the case for abstractionism.  I happily joined the fray around the kitchen table.  My brother, Jonny, ten years my junior, horned in on our exchanges much later on, and eventually became an art history professor.  He recommended books I should read, like George Bull’s Michelangelo, which would become one of the research sources for Stolen Light, the first in my art history mystery series.  Intermittently, I’ve edited art monographs on Renaissance art, an enlightening experience in itself.  Whatever knowledge I’ve gleaned over the years has not been through formal means, but through interest and application.  

About the Book

To Kingdom Come
Art History Mystery Book Four
by Claudia Riess

Published 31 May 2023
Level Best Books

Genre: Mystery
Page Count: 311
Add it to your Goodreads TBR!

Amateur sleuths, Erika Shawn-Wheatley, art magazine editor, and Harrison Wheatley, art history professor, attend a Zoom meeting of individuals from around the globe whose common goal is to expedite the return of African art looted during the colonial era. Olivia Chatham, a math instructor at London University, has just begun speaking about her recent find, a journal penned by her great-granduncle, Andrew Barrett, active member of the Royal Army Medical Service during England’s 1897 “punitive expedition” launched against the Kingdom of Benin.

Olivia is about to disclose what she hopes the sleuthing duo will bring to light, when the proceedings are disrupted by an unusual movement in one of the squares on the grid. Frozen disbelief erupts into a frenzy of calls for help as the group, including the victim, watch in horror the enactment of a murder videotaped in real time.

It will not be the only murder or act of brutality Erika and Harrison encounter in their two-pronged effort to hunt down the source of violence and unearth a cache of African treasures alluded to in Barrett’s journal.

Much of the action takes place in London, scene of the crimes and quest for redemption

Amazon US | Amazon CA | Amazon UK

Excerpt

The first page identified the journal’s owner and date of inception in neatly penned script:

Andrew James Dexter Barrett Book One: 22 March 1897 – 17 August 1897 The subject of where Book Two and beyond might have gone off to was not raised because it would have been futile and, at least for now, irrelevant. Erika carefully turned the page to reveal the journal’s first entry, thankfully in that same legible, script: 22 March, homecoming. They read on, silently.

Hard to believe it has been less than ten weeks since the SS Malacca, cargo steamship refitted as a hospital ship, set forth for the Benin coast with me and my fellow medics aboard. It seems like a lifetime ago, perhaps because I have become a new man, or rather a newly awakened man, in the interim.

I have learned firsthand what history books and hearsay can only, at best, inadequately describe, and I will never again shut my eyes to the indignities and injustices we self-proclaimed entitled few, heap upon our brethren: those less fiscally sound as well as those of darker skin.

On Saturday, 20 March, when the ship pulled into Gosport, England, Father was waiting for me on the dock in top hat and frock coat, dapper as the nobleman he is. As I heave-hoed my laundry bag containing the rescued Benin treasures into our horse-drawn carriage, Father commented on its obvious weight. “What have you got in there?” he asked, with barely a trace of curiosity. “Medical books and instruments,” I answered without hesitation, realizing as I uttered the words that I had no intention of bringing him into my confidence.

I had been getting about on my own for years and could very well have hired a carriage to take me on the sixty-six-mile journey home, but Father had been adamant about accompanying me, even though it meant that both he and his coachman must overnight at an inn to, and again from, Gosport. In retrospect, I wonder if his intention, perhaps not conscious, was to use our extensive time alone to reclaim his control over me, since he did, after all, spend a good deal of time speaking of his activities in the House of Lords and pressing upon me the certainty that I was “marvelously suited” to that rewarding life. Mid-point between Gosport and Hertfordshire, we rented rooms at the inn in Guildford, where Father and the coachman had stayed the night before. To dilute Father’s lecture disguised as conversation, I must have consumed more ale that night than I had in the previous six months.

I awakened this morning well rested, but with a raging headache. Father must have taken pity on me because for the balance of our journey he eased up considerably on his mission to refashion me as a slightly taller version of himself. We arrived home late this evening, and Mother’s embrace and smile of relief comforted me no end. Never mind my goals in life. All that mattered to Mother was my safe return to Barrett Farms.

About the Author

Claudia Riess is an award-winning author of seven novels, four of which form her art history mystery series published by Level Best Books.  She has worked in the editorial departments of The New Yorker and Holt, Rinehart and Winston, and has edited several art history monographs.  Stolen Light, the first book in her series, was chosen by Vassar’s Latin American history professor for distribution to the college’s people-to-people trips to Cuba.  To Kingdom Come, the fourth and most recent, will be added to the syllabus of a survey course on West and Central African Art at a prominent Midwest university.  Claudia has written a number of articles for Mystery Readers Journal, Women’s National Book Association, and Mystery Scene magazine.  At present, she’s consulting with her protagonists about a questionable plot twist in Chapter 9 of the duo’s murder investigation unfolding in book 5; working title: Dreaming of Monet, scheduled for release winter 2024.  For more about Riess and her work, visit www.claudiariessbooks.com.

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Amazon

Giveaway Alert!

Claudia Riess will be awarding a $25 Amazon or B&N gift card to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

June 8	Read Your Writes Book Reviews	June 15	Hope. Dreams. Life… Love
June 15	Long and Short Reviews	June 22	Westveil Publishing
June 29	Fabulous and Brunette	July 13	Lisa Haselton’s Reviews and Interviews
July 20	It’s Raining Books	July 27	Sandra’s Book Club
August 3	Literary Gold	August 10	Kit ‘n Kabookle
August 17	Aubrey Wynne Timeless Love	August 24	The Mystery Section
August 24	The Avid Reader	August 31	Travel the ages

Disclaimer: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.