Los Crimenes de Van Gogh

This book caught my eye for a different reason than the one which lead me to [finish] reading it; in all honesty, the fault was mine for not having browsed through it prior to buying it, but how could I have resisted a title dwelling on the 'Crimes of van Gogh'?!
But before you step right out your door [or open the Amazon or EBay tab] seeking this marvellous novel for yourself, just bear with me for one more split second while I sketch some sort of an Intro/Layout combination: As with crimes the book is concerned indeed, yet not the abstract crimes of the mind or such [as a novice might have imagined, ahem], but the very material crimes of.. murder. And yes, it does refer to van Gogh, yet not the world renowned Dutch painter.. but the split [murderous] personality and signature of one Fernando Castelli [the book's main character].

The plot is as easy to follow as it gets: Fernando dreams of becoming [Argentina's?] most famous script writer and -in a world where any means may be used to such a 'noble' end- he starts to kill around in order to produce his/ his country's/ and, why not?, the world's greatest script. Thus far [i.e. the 1990s], anyway. Along the process, he signs his murders as -you guessed right!- van Gogh [with the blood of his victims..] and his script is as original as it gets since it's written from his own experience.

The writing style is catchy and if you can bear with the plot above then reading this book is an act of cynism-loving. All the classical questions are there: How far can or should one go for the sake of fame? How far can or should art be justified by its means? Is cinema really art, to start with? [the Producer's portrayal smoothly poses this question in a interestingly subtle manner] and an array of many other risky items.

Contrariwise to my expectations -once I started to grasp the reality about this book- it's an interesting combination, which may be largely explained as a product of its time, a looking glass which [self]ironises the 1990s Brownian growth of the film industry [in a South American context]. Whether you're curious to read it however, that's up to how much exploring you're willing to do. Mr. Feinmann has been said to have written deeper novels but I wouldn't know.
Book's cover from here.