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THE DEATH ARTIST

On balance, the formulaic structure, hit-and-miss satire, and facile plot turns keep this one from ever quite delivering...

An inconsistently written first outing about a killer who stalks the denizens of Manhattan’s art scene.

When Kate McKinnon Rothstein realizes that several recent and grisly murders have been staged to evoke classic paintings, it’s clear that author Santlofer, himself an artist, has conjured up a vivid twist for yet another thriller about serial killings. But when Kate Rothstein takes up the case—she’s a retired NYPD officer now turned to art criticism—the story becomes a mostly routine policer, with savvy Kate deducing so swiftly that there’s little complication to the proceedings. The fatal stabbing of Kate’s 20-something adopted daughter Elena is what draws Kate out of retirement, and her son Willie, a promising artist also in his 20s, is one of several art-world suspects. Then, when classical art collector William Mason Pruitt is found dead in his bathtub, stabbed, his arm draped over the side, a dry cleaning bill in his hand—voilà!, it’s Jacques-Louis David’s The Death of Marat as tableau mort. In scenes that Santlofer renders with a keen eye for unsettling detail, another artist is vivisected, a dealer beheaded. Meanwhile, the killer, who, of course, wants to be caught, assembles collages to send to future victims, the pictures containing clues about time and place of the upcoming crimes. When Kate and the NYPD realize that their psychopath is picking off members of New York City’s art scene, the fear is that, as an art critic, Kate may be next—and, combing Pruitt’s apartment for clues, Kate picks up a cufflink belonging to her husband. As critics, dealers, and collectors gather in Venice for an exhibit depicting corpses and dismembered animals, Santlofer makes it clear that contemporary art and real life have merged.

On balance, the formulaic structure, hit-and-miss satire, and facile plot turns keep this one from ever quite delivering what its unsettling theme promises.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2002

ISBN: 0-06-000441-X

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2002

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A CONSPIRACY OF BONES

Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.

Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.

A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”

Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.

Pub Date: March 17, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Scribner

Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020

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BADLANDS

A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be...

Box takes another break from his highly successful Joe Pickett series (Stone Cold, 2014, etc.) for a stand-alone about a police detective, a developmentally delayed boy, and a package everyone in North Dakota wants to grab.

Cassandra Dewell can’t leave Montana’s Lewis and Clark County fast enough for her new job as chief investigator for Jon Kirkbride, sheriff of Bakken County. She leaves behind no memories worth keeping: her husband is dead, her boss has made no bones about disliking her, and she’s looking forward to new responsibilities and the higher salary underwritten by North Dakota’s sudden oil boom. But Bakken County has its own issues. For one thing, it’s cold—a whole lot colder than the coldest weather Cassie’s ever imagined. For another, the job she turns out to have been hired for—leading an investigation her new boss doesn’t feel he can entrust to his own force—makes her queasy. The biggest problem, though, is one she doesn’t know about until it slaps her in the face. A fatal car accident that was anything but accidental has jarred loose a stash of methamphetamines and cash that’s become the center of a battle between the Sons of Freedom, Bakken County’s traditional drug sellers, and MS-13, the Salvadorian upstarts who are muscling in on their territory. It’s a setup that leaves scant room for law enforcement officers or for Kyle Westergaard, the 12-year-old paperboy damaged since birth by fetal alcohol syndrome, who’s walked away from the wreck with a prize all too many people would kill for.

A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be welcome to return and tie up the gaping loose end Box leaves. The unrelenting cold makes this the perfect beach read.

Pub Date: July 28, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-312-58321-7

Page Count: 272

Publisher: Minotaur

Review Posted Online: April 21, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015

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