Jonathan Santlofer – författare

Kate McKinnon is back -- and this time it''s personal.

When two hideously eviscerated bodies are discovered and the only link between them is a bizarre painting left at each crime scene, the NYPD turns to former cop Kate McKinnon, the woman who brought the serial killer the Death Artist to justice. Having settled back into her satisfying life as art historian, published author, host of a weekly PBS television series, and wife of one of New York''s top lawyers, Kate wants no part of it.

But Kate''s sense of tranquility is shattered when this new sequence of murders strikes too close to home. With grief and fury to fuel her, she rejoins her former partner, detective Floyd Brown, and his elite homicide squad on the hunt for a vicious psychopath known as the Color-Blind Killer. In her rage and desperation, Kate allows herself to be drawn into a deadly game of cat and mouse. She abandons her glamorous life for the gritty streets of Manhattan, immersing herself in a world where brutality and madness appear to be the norm, where those closest to her may have betrayed her -- and where, in the end, nothing is what it seems.

History and fiction collide with deadly consequences in the third Kate McKinnon novel—a story of bitter revenge, where the past invades the present and a decades-old secret proves fatal

Kate McKinnon has lived many lives, from Queens cop to Manhattan socialite, television art historian, and the woman who helped the NYPD capture the Death Artist and the Color Blind killer. But that''s the past. Now, devastated by the death of her husband, Kate is attempting to quietly rebuild her life as a single woman. Gone are the Park Avenue penthouse and designer clothes. Now it''s a funky Chelsea loft, downtown fashion, and even a hip new haircut as Kate plunges back into her work—writing a book about America''s most celebrated artistic era, the New York School of the 1940s and ''50s, a circle that included Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Mark Rothko.

But when a lunatic starts slashing the very paintings she is writing about—along with their owners—Kate is once again tapped by the NYPD. As she deciphers the evidence—cryptic images that reveal both the paintings and the people who will be the next targets—Kate is drawn into a world where art and art history provide lethal clues.

The Killing Art is Jonathan Santlofer''s most gripping and chilling story yet, but that isn''t the only reason the novel is remarkable. The author, who is also an acclaimed artist, has created works of art just for the book that tantalize and challenge readers by using well-known symbols in innovative ways, allowing them to decode the clues along with Kate. A masterwork of both suspense fiction and art, The Killing Art will impress both thriller readers and art fans as the plot twists and turns toward a shocking climax.

“Santlofer’s fluid, almost poetic, writing, coupled with his extraordinary artwork, places him at the forefront of cutting-edge crime fiction.”—Chicago Tribune  

Jonathan Santlofer has brilliantly reinvented the crime novel, and he returns with his most gripping and astonishing suspense novel to date: The Murder Notebook. An acclaimed visual artist whose numerous awards include two National Endowment for the Arts painting grants—and whose work has been reviewed in The New York Times, Art in America, and Artforum, among other publications—Santlofer combines gripping tales of murder and detection with stunning artwork that enhances and is integral to the story. In The Murder Notebook he brings back NYPD forensic sketch artist Nate Rodriguez, hero of Santlofer’s critically acclaimed thriller Anatomy of Fear, to unravel a gruesomely tangled thread of apparent murder-suicides in New York City.

NYPD sketch artist Nate Rodriguez possesses a remarkable gift. From the smallest clues—an off-hand comment, a brief flash of fear in a victim''s eyes—he is able to create an uncanny likeness of the assailant. Now Detective Terri Russo needs his help to solve a particularly shocking series of murders, perpetrated by a psychopath who enjoys drawing pictures of his crimes before committing them. Nate is being asked to enter the dark, twisted mind of a monster—to re-create a face that no one has lived to identify. But as a portrait slowly begins taking shape in Nate''s mind and on the page, an electrifying game of cat and mouse reaches an unexpected new level—as a brilliant killer uses his own unique talents to turn the investigation in a terrifying new direction...

A breathtakingly original novel of suspense, Jonathan Santlofer''s Anatomy of Fear mixes prose and pictures to create a story that burns its way into the brain and brilliantly revitalizes the crime fiction genre.