----- Original Message -----
From: Jansy Berndt de Souza Mello
To: D. Barton Johnson
Sent: Sunday, March 23, 2003 3:35 AM
Subject: Hello/ Nabokov Sighting

 
     I´ve just read in the Nabokov-L a reference to a Spanish detective novel by Arturo Perez-Reverte, " The Seville Communion", and I  now remember that this author quotes VN quite often, and extensively, in another book whose title I´ve forgotten now ( and I hope that have kept the novel instead of lending it away! ).
     I recall that the story was about the auction of a painting about chess-players and a game. This Rennaissance painting offered  clues to the identity of the person who had killed the King represented in it, showing his moves on the chess board.  The entire novel was constructed around  chess-games, with a modern killer expressing himself also through chess moves. It  quotes Nabokov from the first to the last page.