Cezanne's Quarry — Barbara Corrado Pope

A beautiful 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 Cezanne's hidden past. Exploring questions of science and religion that persist even to this day, Cezanne's Quarry is a provocative debut mystery about life, death, love, and art.