The Burnt Orange Heresy

A Novel

This is the classic neo-noir novel acclaimed as Charles Willeford's best and the basis for a 2020 major motion picture.

Fast-talking, backstabbing, womanizing, and fiercely ambitious art critic James Figueras will do anything - blackmail, burglary, and beyond - to make a name for himself. When an unscrupulous collector offers Figueras a career-making chance to interview Jacques Debierue, the greatest living - and most reclusive - artist, the critic must decide how far he will go to become the art-world celebrity he hungers to be. Will Figueras stop at the opportunity to skim some cream for himself or push beyond morality's limits to a bigger payoff?

Crossing the art world with the underworld, Willeford creates a novel of dark hue and high aesthetic polish. The Burnt Orange Heresy - the 1970s crime classic now back in print - has lost none of its savage delights as it re-creates the making of a murderer, calmly and with exquisite tension, while satirizing the workings of the art world as the ultimate con.

©1971 by Charles Willeford (P)2020 by Blackstone Publishing

Do it!!! This is Charles Willeford at his best.

Do it!!! This is Charles Willeford at his best. Surprise ending and fantastic nihilistic tone.

Excellent

It’s good story with amazing vocabulary. The story has Well developed characters and the state of Florida. A great deal of information about art and the profession of an art critic.

Portrait of an Artist as a Immobilized Hero

“No pido nunca a nadie is a good summary of the code Debierue’s lived by all his life. Translated, it means, ‘I never ask nobody for nothing.’” ~ Willeford, Charles. The Burnt Orange Heresy: A Novel

Debierue, the Nihilistic Surrealistic painter at the heart of this story, is a perfect example of Willeford's "Immobilized Hero." When we meet him he is a reclusive old man producing fictional paintings that reveal a hidden truth about art and the weird and sometimes twisted world of art critics and collectors.

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Unique Story

This book kept me really entertained for days. I didn’t want it to end. As an art historian, I welcomed all the new information about contemporary art and the anthropological critique of the superficial and corrupt artworld, that many times has nothing to do with Art.. The characters were very interesting and the story original and unique. I was a little bit disappointed of the ending •spoiler alert• It is a modern “crime and punishment” But it was worth hearing it just for the uniqueness of the story and the immersion in the scenario of the games artists, art critics, and dealers play with the Minds of avid and ambitious collectors.