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

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 Cezanne or a betrayed Westbury, Bernard soon finds himself on a mission to unravel the secrets of Solange and Cezanne'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, Cezanne's Quarry is an impressive debut mystery about life, death, love, and art.