O Sacred Head

Praise for O Sacred Head... "Anyone who has ever wandered into a museum gallery of Italian religious paintings of the Baroque period and been repelled by the lurid depictions of flayed, flagellated, roasted, toasted, and crucified martyrs will laugh (and shudder) at Nicholas Kilmer's irreverent treatment...." -New York Times Book Review Art expert Fred Taylor is the agent for paranoid Beacon Hill collector Clayton Reed. Fred supplies the brainwork and the muscle in their association. And from time to time, Fred either runs with, or outfoxes, the police. Now the cops have called him to a grisly murder scene. A decapitated corpse has been found alongside a 17th century Italian religious painting of Christ in Agony. The body is unidentified, but the police, searching for clues to the murder, want Fred to identify the painting. Reed warns Fred to stay away, but Fred is hooked by the mystery. Fighting a snowstorm paralyzing Boston, he researches the picture's provenance and learns that it is rumored to have miraculous properties. He also comes to suspect it is part of a collection of possibly fake Old Masters being hawked around town. Fake or not, can this painting identify the man who died? Nicholas Kilmer, formerly dean of the Swain School of Design in New Bedford, Massachusetts, presently makes his living in the art business.