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Following the success of his debut book, Tiepollo Blue, British art critic, academic, and author James Cahill brings his vast knowledge of the unique world of art forth in his latest novel, The Violet Hour. Cahill is a scholar with degrees from Magdalen College, Oxford, Courtauld Institute, and a PhD from Cambridge University. He is a lifelong devotee of art and has entertained becoming an artist. In The Violet Hour, he combines his passion with keen literary skills to create suspense, emotion, power, betrayal, and death—seasoned with surprising twists and glazed with a page-turning writing style. In a recent interview, he shared some of the elements that produced his new novel.
Judith Erwin: The Violet Hour is your second published novel. I’ve read that you began your first novel at age 14, but you didn’t publish until 2022. Were you writing in between?
James Cahill: The short answer is I was writing fiction much of that time, but in tiny little fragments. So, my first fiction book, Tiepollo Blue, came out in 2022, but it was really the product of about ten years of writing. The desire was always there from my early teens, but life gets in the way as other realities come along.
JE: Your new book, The Violet Hour, is grounded in the world of art through a dealer, a wealthy collector, and a successful artist. But you’ve also written a non-fiction book on the prominent British artist David Hockney. Was the artist in The Violet Hour, Thomas Haller, affected by your interest in and knowledge of Hockney?
JC: I had been writing about Hockney at the same time as I was working on this novel. It’s almost inevitable. From an early age, I was just really entranced by those early 1960s paintings of Los Angeles, which seemed like a world away. I met him [Hockney] early last year when he opened his sensational retrospective at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris. It was a very lovely experience being able to say hello to him. I’ve now been working on a longer book all about him, which is called The Beverly Hills Housewife. I don’t know whether I was thinking consciously of Hockney, but I was thinking of that kind of artist, that kind of hyper-successful artist with worldwide renown. I’m not thinking about any artist in the world, particularly Hockney or anybody else, but I was thinking of that type of artist—that very successful artist.
JE: You did such a brilliant job of describing the first painting Leo, the collector, was determined to buy early in the book that I wanted to see it.
JC: I’m glad you said that. The closest thing I could point you to is probably the work of Gerhard Richter or Rudolf Stingel. I’m glad you mentioned the obsession that Leo, the real estate tycoon who lives in Manhattan, has with this Thomas Haller painting. Leo is a big-time art collector, and he just sees this painting in a magazine and decides that he has to have it. And this obsession borders on a kind of madness. I was interested in writing about the nature of a certain kind of art collecting, which can really take this very obsessive form. And in Leo’s case, the desire to own this painting, to have this work, and to collect in general is born of many things; but one of them is this need for consolation, I think. You know, collecting has become very key part of his identity. He’s reflecting back at himself with all of these art treasures that are scattered through his Manhattan apartment. And art is this advanced, elaborate form of consolation for everything he’s lost and everything he doesn’t have, which seems weird, because at face value, he’s a man who has or could buy anything. But the art is compensating for some sort of gnawing sense of lack in him, as we’ll find out. It’s not as if people with money don’t have that deeper investment. Very often they do. And that was something I wanted to reflect in the character of Leo as well, who in some respects is a total monster, greedy and egocentric. But in other respects, there’s depth to him that you might not initially want to acknowledge.
JE: Were any of the characters based on someone you’ve known?
JC: No. Not one of my characters is based on any individual person from real life.
JE: Do you anticipate continuing to write fiction?
JC: Yes. I’m working on a new work of fiction at the moment.
JE: Will your future books remain centered in the art world?
JC: I find myself moving a little bit away from that. But ultimately, it is more the setting than the subject. I find that the real themes of The Violet Hour are probably more universal and to do with loss, longing, betrayal, desire. I think I will move away from it now, at least for a while.
JE: Do you plan to continue using a color in the title of future books?
JC: No. And people don’t believe me when I say this, but it wasn’t really intentional that it happened.
JE: Is there anything you want prospective readers of The Violet Hour to know?
JC: One thing that might be worth mentioning is the fact that this story begins with a very abrupt, tragic episode. It’s a beautiful summer’s evening in London. Everything’s absolutely still. It’s like a picture. Suddenly, we hone in on this young man on a balcony. We don’t know who he is. He falls. It’s a kind of fool of Icarus moment. This novel, to the extent that it is mystery or a crime novel, is about finding out what happened to this young man—who he was; how his life and his death were inter-threaded with the lives, the desires, and the regrets of our three main characters.
JE: As I read The Violet Hour, I could see a future sequel. Is that a possibility?
JC: I love the idea that there could be a sequel, but I don’t think there will be one.
JE: With the success of Tiepollo Blue and now The Violet Hour, I know readers will look forward to your future work. It’s been great speaking with you. Thank you.
Judith Erwin is a retired attorney, journalist, and award-winning author of romantic suspense and crime fiction, including the series Shepherd & Associates. She is a member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, Florida Writers Association, and the FBI Citizens Academy Alumni Association.
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