Booklife Review: The Cloisters, by Katy Hays

The Cloisters, art history, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Renaissance, Medieval and Renaissance gardens, poisonous plants, tarot, murder, New York City, Catskills

During a steamy summer in New York City, Ann Stilwell, a recent Renaissance art history graduated from Walla Walla, Washington seeks to escape her past and finds both refuge and mystery at The Cloisters museum in New York City. In The Cloisters, author Katy Hays creates intrigue and shadowy mystery first by setting her story in the medieval outpost of The Metropolitan Art, its recreated Renaissance gardens and its collection of great and tiny treasures, including ancient tarot cards, about which mystery, intrigue and murder swirl.

Ann plans to engage in a curatorial internship at the Met’s flagship museum, but the departure of her planned mentor causes her to be placed at The Cloisters at the request of its director who finds himself short-handed and in need of her assistance. There she meets the director’s paramour and protege, Rachel, a wealthy heiress with a shadowy past of her own. The women befriend one another, albeit with mixed motives. Like Rachel, Ann is drawn to the more obscure art and art history of The Cloisters rather than than the traditional arts in the main Metropolitan Museum. Patrick and Rachel enlist Ann in their research on the art and use of tarot cards in Medieval and Renaissance Italy. We first meet Ann as a bit of a country bumpkin and goody two-shoes, but Ann is eager to shed her unsophisticated upbringing, and embraces New York City’s pace and fervor. She lusts after The Cloisters’ aloof and mysterious gardener, Leo, only to discover his prior torrid history with Rachel, and his illicit side hustle. Meanwhile, Ann attempts to puzzle out the relationship between Rachel and Patrick, and Rachel’s tragic family history and wealth.

As New York City’s summer temperature and humidity rises, so does the mystery and drama around the tarot card research. Ann begins to believe in the power of the cards which portend dark changes, just as one of the staff turns up dead in the library. The investigation swirls as tidbits of Ann’s, Rachel’s and Leo’s pasts unfurl. The story gallops to a shocking conclusion that I did not see coming.