AN ARTFUL CORPSE

The 1960s New York art world provides a backdrop for a crime of passion.

The final entry in Harrison’s Art of Murder trilogy begins on the evening of Nov. 1, 1967, when Christopher Gray, a student at the Art Students League of New York, arrives for class and discovers a dead body on the model stand. A flashback to late September shows a class led by Edward Laning. Student TJ Fitzgerald feels sparks with classmate Ellen Jamieson and fumes when class monitor Bill Millstein apparently has the same idea. After Ellen explains that Bill’s gay, TJ, who’s the son of the detectives from the first volume of Harrison’s trilogy (An Exquisite Corpse, 2016), romances Ellen in earnest, and the trio become friends. The class is excited when Laning announces a visit from Thomas Hart Benton, but the artist turns out to be a bigoted boor, prone to insults and excessive drinking, and he ends up as the corpse discovered by Gray (unlike the real Benton, who died in 1975 in Kansas City). Jaded Inspector Jacob Kaminsky considers Bill, who got into a fight with Benton, the prime suspect. TJ and Ellen’s relationship proceeds in tandem with Kaminsky’s investigation, and they too do some sleuthing, bolstered by the criminal justice class they’re taking at John Jay College. Entertaining set pieces include trips to legendary Greenwich Village nightclub The Bitter End, Max’s Kansas City, and Andy Warhol’s Factory, where somebody, probably Valerie Solanas, had threatened Benton. The solution comes out of left field; the mystery’s really a MacGuffin for Harrison’s affectionate portrait of a bygone era in New York.

A brisk and breezy romp packed with celebs from  a half-century ago.