Review of Love and Murder

[Salome Ndichu 1]

[Following is a volunteer review of "Love and Murder" by Irv Arenberg.]

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5 out of 5 stars

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Love and Murder by Dr. Irv Arenberg is about an iconic Dutch Post-Impressionist painter, Vincent van Gogh, who met his untimely demise on July 28, 1890. He was buried with all his secrets and any remaining physical evidence needed to solve this cold case. Which brings us to a resolve by Dr. Arenberg to bring to light his findings through his second book in the Killing Vincent trilogy. 

Normally, when people get to learn the truth, they leave out the misinformation that they had acquired there before and rush to present their truth. Dr. Irv here takes us through his journey of acquiring information for us to be the judges, which is quite a storytelling perspective. I like that about this book because you'll get to dissect the misinformation piece by piece until you land on the conclusion that indeed, there was a lot of negligence and overlooking of critical loopholes that led to the assumptions around Vincent's death. 

Unfortunately, this truth comes in a little too late, as the perpetrators are long gone and the jury in the public eye is already sold out to the narrative that Vincent was a mad genius who eventually succumbed to his mental illness and committed suicide. It is noteworthy that the author's thoughts about Vincent's demise being a murder have been echoed by other authors, like Irving Stone, in his book, Lust for Life.

There's evident passion by the author to get the truth out there. This book is as good as Vincent's biography as it informs us of his career, his love life, which for the most part was unfruitful, and his demise. There are many displays of Vincent's artwork in this book, as well as picturesque views of the landscape and the town of Auvers-sur-Oise, France, which was Vincent's residence. 

I found the table of contents to be quite helpful for referencing and navigation, as the book is lengthy. However, as you can guess with a lengthy book, there was a lot of repetition. "The Doctor Did It!" has been repeated so many times, either as an analogy or a statement. This painted the picture, but then the repetition was overzealously done. 

There's a lot to take from this book; in fact, my first takeaway is to be careful of those whom we associate with and refer to them as friends. There's more to this book than the mystery surrounding Vincent's death, so I give it a full rating of 5 out of 5 stars.

 I would recommend this book to people who love investigative journalism and are art enthusiasts. It is a good read.

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Love and Murder
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