Murdering Matisse. A Novel

Henri Matisse's Chapel of the Rosary in Vence, France, is targeted by four adversarial factions. A New York City investment group seeks to buy it. The Vatican demands the security of the chapel's iconic artistry and its resident Dominican order. The French government fears yet another act of cultural kleptocracy. Finally, two Tunisian French medical doctors are offended by Matisse's use of Arabic, Moorish, and Islamic decorative arts, and they discover the official dismissal of the early Arabic/Islamic medical science that fostered his full recovery from an early bout of duodenal cancer. They poignantly commit to the destruction of the chapel, unaware that ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) covertly invested in a Matisse masterpiece displayed there.