Review by Annabel
Oscar de Muriel is Mexican, but based in the UK, where he came to finish his PhD. He’s a chemist and violinist as well an established author having written seven Victorian occult mysteries – the ‘Frey & McGray’ series, which I haven’t read, but they sound good fun. His latest novel, published by newish UK indie Extraordinary Books, is rather different.
The main events in The End of the Vodka all happened, and the main characters all existed. What he’s done, having seen what could have happened between them is to cleverly join the dots, using some artistic licence to imagine conversations and possible consequences to create a kind of mystery thriller from them – and it involves Frida Kahlo. I was sold on the spot!
Fact: Dorothy Hale was a beauty, a showgirl and an aspiring but unsuccessful actress, and later a socialite, having first married a millionaire. On 21st October 1938, she threw herself from a high window of the apartment block where she lived in New York City. In 1939, Dorothy’s friend, Clare Boothe Luce, a writer and diplomat, married to Henry Luce (who owned Time magazine amongst other titles), commissioned Frida Kahlo to paint a retablo (a devotional picture) of Dorothy as a memorial to her. However, Frida being Frida, and a surrealist, didn’t produce what Clare expected, instead chronicling Dorothy’s life as she fell. Luce nearly destroyed the painting, but her friend, the artist Isamu Noguchi, persuaded her otherwise. The painting was later donated anonymously to the Phoenix Art Museum in Arizona.
De Muriel then creates two timelines. The first follows Frida Kahlo in 1939, as she tries to get inside the head of the late Dorothy in order to paint her. Told as letter/diary entries written to her husband, the muralist, Diego Rivera back in Mexico, with whom she thinks Dorothy had an affair the last time he was in the city. Rivera was a notorious womaniser, but Kahlo loved him yet, even though they were virtually separated at this time, by distance at least. These parts are written based on Frida’s diaries, which de Muriel was able to consult.
The second strand follows Clare Boothe Luce in 1940. She is blackmailed by an important businessman, Bernie Baruch, to find out information about the war in Europe from various sources, including Wallis Simpson, the Duchess of Windsor. There is documented evidence that they stayed at the Ritz at the same time, but their meeting, where Clare aims to persuade her to divulge information on von Ribbentrop, is imagined.
Having had access to Frida’s documents and able to quote them in the book, de Muriel gives us super insights into Frida’s head. She was always in pain, yet struggled through as we know, and was frustrated that at this stage of her career she wasn’t getting the attention that male artists like the other surrealists and her husband of course were receiving. In Muriel’s depiction of her as she tries to winkle out the facts to enable her to create the painting, she plays a detective role; as Clare does similarly with Wallis Simpson, showing that Muriel has done his research well again. A political edge to the story is added via Frida and her husband’s associations with the Communist party and Leon Trotsky – who would be murdered (with an icepick) in Mexico City in 1940. This contrasts with Clare’s mission to get Fascist info. It was all fascinating. This was a very different kind of art mystery/thriller that I enjoyed hugely.
Annabel is a co-founder and editor of Shiny. She also blogs at annabookbel.net.
Oscar de Muriel, The End of the Vodka (Extraordinary Books, 2026) ISBN 978-1917569279, hardback, 336pp..
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