In her 1970 essay “On the Morning After the Sixties,” Joan Didion described her disillusionment with the idea that political protest could “affect man’s fate in the slightest.” It’s an opinion James Blaine “J.B.” Mooney might share, if he were paying attention. “He’s insulated from a lot of the turmoil that's going on in the broader world.” That insulation dissolves over time, and The Mastermind’s political backdrop becomes a key aspect of its mise-en-scène. At the fictional Framingham Museum of Art—about 20 miles west of the very real Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, site of the largest unsolved art heist in history—a drowsy security guard mans the galleries.
Author: Lindsay Costello
Published at: 2025-11-18 21:30:00
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