"Back to Blood"

Tom Wolfe, who started out as a journalist, became one of our best writers. His 18 books include four novels that are notable for their non-fiction character. Wolfe weaves into stories knowledge about art, culture, sociology and psychology. That Balzac-inspired approach entrances me.

I'm almost through Wolfe's complete oeuvre and want to report on his last novel, "Back to Blood" (2012). It is immensely entertaining. The story begins at a poor Cuban community in Miami but ends up as satire of the international art market and its chicanery. Miami Art Basil is one of the most prominent art fairs in the world where ultra-rich collectors vie for hot art. Wolfe knows the art world better than any other writer and is merciless describing its predations.

In his work Wolfe creates characters and scenes of detailed specificity. You easily believe they're real; they seem too authentic to be fictional.

Reading "Back to Blood" was the most enjoyable thing I did this year. Strangers in Starbucks probably wondered why I was smiling and laughing while staring at a Kindle. I'm agog to finish Wolfe's books and, strictly entre nous, recommend his work.

For a sample of delightful metaphors and wordplay consider:

- "The look on Sergei's face took his breath away. This was not the mere look that kills. This was the look that kills and then smoke-cures the carcass and eats it."

- Rich collectors are "eager to inhale the emanations of Art and other Higher Things amid the squalor of" urban art districts.

- She wore "enough black eyeshadow to make her eyes look like a pair of glistening orbs floating upon a pair of concupiscent mascara pools."

- The curtains hanging in the mansion were "almost comically magnificent."

- "All three [girls] were shrink-wrapped in denim. Their jeans hugged their declivities fore and aft, entered every crevice, explored every hill and dale of their lower abdomens and climbed their montes veneris."

- He sat "at a desk with a surface you could land a Piper Cub on."

Finally, Wolfe enlarges my vocabulary with esoteric words like zephyr, rakehell and nob. I like building new wings on my Word Warehouse.