A young woman is found murdered…and the clues to her death point to her spurned lover, Paul Cézanne

In this richly atmospheric novel, a mysterious young woman named Solange Vernet arrives in Aix-en-Provence with her lover, a Darwinian scholar named Charles Westbury, and a year later is found strangled in a quarry outside the city. The young and inexperienced magistrate, Bernard Martin, finds his investigation caught in the crossfires of a raging cultural debate.

Initially assuming that Solange’s murder was a simple crime de passion by either a jealous Cézanne or a betrayed Westbury, Bernard soon finds himself on a mission to unravel the secrets of Solange and Cézanne’s hidden past - the key to which may be a series of his paintings which depict the strangulation and violation of a woman with golden-red hair.

Exploring the questions of science and religion - and the role of women in these realms - that persist even today, Cézanne’s Quarry is an impressive debut mystery about life, death, love, and art.