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Summary
Summary
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 tranquillity 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.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In this run-of-the-mill serial killer thriller, nothing much separates Santlofer's psychotic villain from his fictional brethren other than his fancying himself an artist and being cursed with cerebral achromatopsia, unable to see the world in anything other than sludgy shades of gray. His opponent is ex-cop turned art historian Kate McKinnon, heroine of Santlofer's first novel, The Death Artist, and wife of wealthy lawyer Richard Rothstein. When her old NYPD partner Floyd Brown asks her to help identify a new serial killer with an art connection, she feels a familiar stirring of adrenaline. But it's only after husband Richard is murdered in a manner that points to the art killer that she throws herself into the investigation ("Later there would be time to grieve. Now was the time for action"). Santlofer is an artist as well as a writer, and his intimate knowledge of the art world gives this thriller a glimmer of interest. He delivers mini-lectures on painting techniques, the art of the insane, how to dress and act at an art opening and much other art lore, but most readers will find the killer far too derivative to be anything more than grotesque. Thriller newbies who follow art and the New York art scene in particular will find this entertaining, but there's little fresh material for veteran genre enthusiasts. Agent, Suzanne Gluck. 6-city author tour. (Oct. 12) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Second-novelist Santlofer (The Death Artist, 2002) unleashes another fictional serial killer on his colleagues in the Manhattan art world. On page one, we meet our killer, a frustrated colorblind artist who hums '80s tunes as he stalks and then eviscerates a sweet blond prostitute in a swirl of pornographic color lust, describing her organs as "Orchid! Eggplant! Cerise! Magenta!" Equally purple is the next scene, as Katherine McKinnon Rothstein--the Astoria beat cop turned art historian heroine of Santlofer's first outing--makes love to Richard Rothstein, her beautiful, richer-than-God criminal attorney husband of ten years. (Note to authors: Shellfish metaphors in sex scenes need to go.) Poor Kate. Previously, Santlofer also killed off her adopted daughter Elena. Now, her buddies in the NYPD get her to take one day out of her comfortable uptown life--lunching, producing her PBS television series, volunteering for a foundation for underprivileged youth--to lend her artistic expertise to the case, just in time for her to discover the next victim: Richard himself, gutted in a back alleyway. Some women might take to bed in grief, but Kate straps on her Glock and picks up a gay cop sidekick, and we're off! Our killer, like Son of Sam, is goaded on by imaginary voices--Tony the Tiger and the cast of 90210--and happily paints Crayola-colored canvases in his victim's blood ("Maroon! Mulberry! Wild Strawberry!"), while Kate herself, Jodie Foster-like, becomes the focus of his obsession. We get an inscrutable subplot involving the mob, Richard's cokehead former underling, and a pimp. Kate commits a justifiable homicide, then gives a tutorial in art world clothing chic to the NYPD ("the operative word is black") for an ill-fated stake-out at a gallery. Bad-guy corpses pile up--he must be dead. But wait--there's eighty pages left to go. It's Friday the Thirteenth! An exhausting, overstuffed read that still manages to leave key questions unsatisfied. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Since she was once a cop, art historian Kate McKinnon gets called in when a serial killer starts leaving odd little paintings with his victims. A six-city author tour. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Color Blind A Novel of Suspense Chapter One "Hold on a sec." Kate unhooked her black lace bra, lay back onto the all-white bed, pillows, silk spread pushed aside. "I was just getting to that." "The bedspread or my bra?" "Who cares about the spread?" Richard smiled, crow's-feet deepening at the corners of his dark blue eyes. "I do. And I'd think you would know that after almost ten years of marriage." "Is this going to be a discussion?" Richard's lips grazed one of Kate's breasts. Kate shivered, then sighed. "No discussion." She slid her arms over his neck, thinking how much she loved him, perhaps even more so now than she did when they had first met and he'd courted her -- Richard Rothstein the dashing bachelor lawyer, Kate McKinnon the Astoria cop. Talk about an odd couple. At least on the surface. Not so different once you stripped away Richard's glossy facade to find the boy from Brooklyn; or added the polished veneer that Kate had worked so hard to acquire after she'd left the force, returned to her first love, art history, earned the Ph.D. that became the art book that became her very own PBS series, Artists' Lives. All of it a surprise to her still. If anyone had bothered to ask the young girl from Astoria where she'd be at forty she would never have predicted any kind of fame, certainly not riches. Exchange a row house for a penthouse? Sometimes even Kate had trouble believing it. She was lucky and she knew it. Perhaps that was why she devoted half her time to the educational foundation Let There Be a Future -- the one that funded inner-city kids from grade school through college. Saving kids. Hell, she didn't need a psychiatrist to explain that one to her -- the motherless girl from Queens. Though when she could finally afford to she'd spent some time on the couch trying to get past it, or at least understand it: her mother's early death -- a suicide -- and all the guilt she'd felt, as if somehow she'd been the cause. It was the shrink who got Kate to see that following in her father's footsteps -- becoming a cop -- had more than a little to do with trying to please him and make up for his losing his wife, who, by the way, if anyone cared, happened to be her mother. Just about every other man in her family -- uncles, cousins -- had been a cop. Kate was the first woman. And even with her making detective in two short years, getting her father's attention and approval had proved elusive. But when they assigned her to runaways and she'd gotten the chance to save kids, it all became worth it. Back then, Detective McKinnon thought she could save everyone -- but those missing teens had taken a toll. How many times can I have my heart broken? A question she'd put to herself, her shrink, her chief in Astoria, and later to Richard, who had promised to try and mend the many fissures and cracks when he proposed marriage and offered her a way out. And so far he'd done a pretty good job. "Love you," she whispered. Richard smiled at his wife, took in her unconventional beauty -- the long straight nose, expressive brows over piercing green eyes. He ran his hand through her thick dark hair that Kate had only recently begun to spend way too much money on -- having the few gray strands spun into gold. A gift to herself for her forty-second birthday. "Anyone ever tell you you're gorgeous?" "No. Not recently." Kate leveled a stare at Richard. "Get it?" Richard painted a sheepish grin across his features. "Sorry." "Forgiven," said Kate, moving her hand down Richard's back and under the waistband of his pajamas -- ones she'd bought in Florence when she was there to deliver a lecture on up-and-coming American artists at the Accademia only last month. Richard rolled off her, pushed his pajamas down, kicked until they fell off. Sometimes, thought Kate, observing her tall, athletic husband kicking away, he seemed like a little boy, even with his forty-fifth birthday only a week away. Maybe, she mused, as he maneuvered himself back on top of her, all men are boys, which, at the moment, was just fine with her. Kate kissed his mouth, then ran her lips lightly over his ear. Richard moved to Kate's neck, tongue skiing along her collarbone until reaching her breast. Through half-closed eyes Kate took in Richard's brown-gray curls, freckles on the tops of his shoulders. Was it only a year ago she'd come so close to losing him; to believing he had betrayed her? The Death Artist. An image flashed behind Kate's eyes: Richard's onyx-and-gold cuff link half-hidden under the edge of a Persian rug, catching a hint of light, but enough to be noticed -- at the scene of a murder. "Richard, you won't ever lie to me again, will you?" Richard's shoulders sagged. "What? No. Why ... now?" "Nothing. Sorry. Never mind." Richard expelled a loud breath, sat up. "What's the matter?" "Nothing. I -- I was just ... remembering," "We've been through it, haven't we, Kate? A dozen times. I thought it was ancient history." "It is. Forgive me." Kate was sorry she'd spoken, wanted to take it all back, have Richard's hand on her thigh, tongue on her breast. "Tell you what," she said, laying her hand on his cheek, "I promise to shut up completely if you just go back to where you left off, okay?" Her fingers flitted over the hair on his chest, then down, lightly skimming his half-erect cock, back and forth, feeling it get hard again. "Deal," said Richard, burying his head in her neck, adding a playful bite. "Ow!" "You're not allowed to say anything, remember?" Kate lay back, closed her eyes. But a second later another image flashed: a body on a kitchen floor -- and blood everywhere ... Color Blind A Novel of Suspense . Copyright © by Jonathan Santlofer. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold. Excerpted from Color Blind: A Novel of Suspense by Jonathan Santlofer All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.