Greetings, Loyal Reader!
Dirty Work (1993)
I have an update for you on our quest to learn “Who did Dirty Work?” As you recall, I emailed a plea for help to a general-purpose email address at my former publisher Ace/Roc/NAL/Penguin. (Read it here.)
That was last Friday. Yesterday I received a very kind result from a highly placed insider at the publisher whose name I shall withhold to protect the innocent.
I can’t say for sure that a shadowy ancient conspiracy is suppressing all knowledge of who painted the Dirty Work cover because of secret messages coded into the painting that point the way to a long hidden secret that would overturn the entire theoretical basis of Western civilization. But I also can’t say that they’re not. So just to be on the safe side, I will protect my source’s name.
Let’s call him or her “Deep Book.”
Anyway, Deep Book wrote to me as follows:
Hi Dan,
Thank you for your stirring email! I can’t promise I will be able to get to the bottom of this question for the ages, but I can certainly try!
I will contact the art department and see if they have any files on it. And who knows, they might even recognize the artist’s work.
I’ll let you know what I hear.
All the best,
[[REDACTED]] (aka Deep Book)
Thanks, Deep Book! I apologize in advance for any renegade Templar Knights or lizard people who may come after you for looking into this mystery.
Stay tuned, Loyal Reader — I’ll let you know what Deep Book reports.
Best regards,
Dan McGirt
Hmmm… Has anyone noticed you never see Dan McGirt and Dan Brown at the same time in the same place? Just saying 🙂
Ha! True story: In the early 90’s I clipped a newspaper article about Bill Gates buying one of Leonardo daVinci’s notebooks, the Codex Leicester. It gave me an idea for a story that I sketched out on a piece of note paper: bad guys steal notebook, Gates hires heroes to find it, notebook contains some hidden secret formula or somesuch. Maybe involves Templars, ancient conspiracy, etc. Never got around to writing the book. But I did jot down what I thought was a pretty cool title for this potential epic: The DaVinci Codex
Dan, I asked on the community portal section of isfdb.org about the artist, and got this reply two weeks later 🙂
“I’m not 100% sure but this sure looks like David Mattingly especially when you compared to the covers he did for Janet Morris’ “in Hell” series of anthologies.”
So, you might want to check with David Mattingly. Hope this helps.
Gary — Thanks for your continued investigatory efforts. It would be hilariously ironic if it is David Mattingly. I contacted him a few years ago about possibly doing a cover for Hero Wanted before I decided to go with Richard Hescox (who did the first two original covers). Actually, Mattingly suggested I contact Hescox. But Dirty Work didn’t come up in our exchange at all. So if he painted it, he seems to have suppressed the whole ordeal! 🙂 Still, I will follow up on your lead if I don’t hear anything conclusive from Deep Book soon.
Dan, have you heard anything from Deep Book yet? It’s been three months since the last post.