The Van Gogh Deception

Content Warning: This novel references children in foster care and harm to children. It also references kidnapping. It plays into stereotypes by at times referring to a child in foster care as “lost.”

Hicks employs the term “spider” to refer to both the shape found on the back of the Guillou canvas and the missing notebook that exposes the van Gogh painting as a forgery. These two meanings of the spider are not revealed until Chapter 18 and Chapter 38, respectively. Until then, the spider functions as the novel’s “Macguffin,” and readers only know that the object is something Palmer and his men are desperately trying to obtain and destroy. As a typical device in spy thrillers, the MacGuffin motivates the main action of the plot. The novel introduces the spider as something that “was loose in the city” and needed to be located “within the next two days” (29). The premise allows for the chase and action scenes as Palmer’s prime motivation is to “[f]ind the boy, and they would find the spider” (32).

In the context of the art forgery, the spider is a symbol of deception. The creature and its ability to weave an intricate web refers to Palmer’s elaborate plan to forge multiple paintings and sell them over the course of years.