Rembrandt Sings
by
Michael Johnston
About the book . . .
Ambitious art historian Bill Maguire searches Paris for a subject for his doctoral thesis and follows up faint clues about once famous abstract painter Alexander Golden. He finds himself in Carmel listening to the death-bed confessions of Joe Rembrandt, an art forger on an industrial scale, and meets beautiful Anna Glover whose life seems somehow connected with the dying man.
But when Anna’s lawyer boss completely debunks Rembrandt’s story, he decides it’s time to get out and write his thesis. Unable, however, to get out of his mind Joe’s assertion that he found where Golden disappeared to with his mistress and a cache of his never-before-seen canvases that could be worth millions, Bill searches around Arles for Golden’s farmhouse hideaway that probably never existed outside Rembrandt’s imagination.
He finds Anna there before him and hears yet another version of Joe’s story. Together, they make the discovery that adds love, greed, insanity, academic dishonesty and very likely murder into the mix before leading to a completely unforeseen outcome.
But when Anna’s lawyer boss completely debunks Rembrandt’s story, he decides it’s time to get out and write his thesis. Unable, however, to get out of his mind Joe’s assertion that he found where Golden disappeared to with his mistress and a cache of his never-before-seen canvases that could be worth millions, Bill searches around Arles for Golden’s farmhouse hideaway that probably never existed outside Rembrandt’s imagination.
He finds Anna there before him and hears yet another version of Joe’s story. Together, they make the discovery that adds love, greed, insanity, academic dishonesty and very likely murder into the mix before leading to a completely unforeseen outcome.
About the author . . .
Michael Johnston was born in Leith in 1936 and grew up in the
Scottish Borders. At school he was bookish and not keen on rugby. In
1950, he auditioned for the BBC and read a story on Children’s Hour.
Leaving school he studied Textile Design but, in 1953, he also
auditioned for the BBC Younger Generation programmes and for the next
five years worked as an occasional freelance interviewer, presenter and
question panel member.
In 1955, he spent a summer working in France. He used his BBC
experience to arrange an interview with Françoise Sagan, then a teenage
French novelist, which was part of a radio documentary he recorded,
wrote and presented. He went on to write several radio documentaries for
the BBC including one about the relatively unknown romance between Lord
Thomson, Secretary of State for Air in Ramsay MacDonald’s cabinet and
the Rumanian novelist, Princess Marthe Bibesco, in which the actress
Janet Suzman played the leading role.
In 2001, he embarked on his too long postponed ‘career’ as a novelist
and a programme of study with the Open University culminating in a
first class BA (Honours) in Literature.
In 2009, Michael was awarded an MA (with Distinction) in Modern and
Contemporary Literature by Birkbeck College, University of London. His
dissertation was on the impact of Margaret Thatcher on contemporary
fiction.
His latest novel ‘Rembrandt Sings‘
is available in print or on Kindle and has received excellent reviews.
To find out more about Michael and his book visit his website at www.akanos.co.uk
1 comments:
Thanks for featuring Michael Johnston's book, Rembrandt Sings, on your blog. It really is a superb book, full of twists and turns which keep you guessing right up to the end. I would highly recommend it.
Post a Comment