Product Description

One hot summer afternoon a quarter century ago, a wealthy socialite and her young lover were gunned down in a cheap motel room on the outskirts of the Midwestern city of Calista.

Forensic sketch-artist David Weiss has been haunted by the notoriously unsolved double murder since boyhood. Returning to his hometown to cover a routine murder trial, David instead becomes obsessed, like his psychoanalyst father before him, with one of the victims of that long-ago crime, the beautiful but tragic Barbara Fulraine. David's father believed that if he could unlock Barbara's troubling, recurring nightmare -- "the dream of the broken horses" -- his solution would mark a watershed in his career. But as David seeks to reassemble the face of her killer, he finds that with each stroke of his pencil he is being hurled down a path of ever-darkening mystery, obsession, and dread.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1813343 in Books
• Published on: 2007-08-24
• Released on: 2007-08-24
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

From Amazon.com
Penzler Pick, March 2002: Among William Bayer's remarkable novels, many involve the sense of sight--the way in which we see things. Under the pseudonym David Hunt, for example, he wrote The Magician's Tale and Trick of Light, both of which feature a colorblind photographer. Now again using his own name, Bayer delves once more into the realm of the senses.

David Weiss, like his creator, is a talented courtroom sketch artist. David has returned to his hometown in the Midwest to cover the trial of a performance artist accused of killing her rock-star lover. The national media are there and soon David becomes involved with the female reporter for CNN. As fascinated as he is with the trial and with his new romance, it is an earlier murder in this town that he obsesses about. When David was a boy, the socialite mother of one of his school friends was gunned down in a motel room with her lover. Barbara Fulraine already had known tragedy when her daughter was abducted and murdered several years before. In addition, the young lover gunned down with her was David's tennis teacher. It is the stuff of young boys' fantasies.

But David has an even closer connection: His father, a therapist, was treating Barbara Fulraine for her depression when she was murdered. David's father felt he could help Mrs. Fulraine if only he could unlock her recurring nightmare, a dream about broken horses. But Barbara died before he could do it and, soon afterwards, David's father committed suicide. The gunman, although glimpsed by several people, was never identified.

As an adult, David realizes that he saw all these events through an impressionable boy's eyes. Now he wants to reexamine that case through his adult eyes and discover who gunned down that couple in the motel room. Using his father's notes and taking time out from the trial to interview people who lived in the town at the time, David sketches the memories he digs up until a picture begins to emerge, a picture that may well put David's life in danger if the murderer is still living in the town.

Bayer's talent as a writer and a storyteller is extraordinary. He manages to convey the media circus surrounding the current trial (which has a surprising outcome) with the quiet stillness of a story that has remained buried just beneath the surface of the town's history for many years. --Otto Penzler

From Publishers Weekly
The investigation into a 25-year-old double murder of a wealthy socialite and her young lover is renewed with vigor in this sharp and sexy thriller from Edgar award-winning author Bayer (Peregrine; Switch). When Barbara Fulraine and her lover, Tom Jessup, were gunned down in the cheap Flamingo Court motel in the fictional Midwestern city of Calista, David Weiss was just a young boy. Soon after the homicides, David's father, who is also Barbara's therapist, committed suicide. Now, 25 years later, David is a forensic sketch artist who returns to Calista to cover a celebrity murder trial. While there, he becomes obsessed with the unresolved local scandal of the Flamingo murders, convinced Barbara Fulraine's death was the cause of his family's breakup. He interviews a handful of upper-crust locals as well as residents from the seedier side of town, all of whom seem intent on leaving the past alone. Just as the trail of clues grows cold and David's life is endangered, he comes upon Barbara Fulraine's diary from that time. He begins to unravel the history of the mysterious and erotic woman whose sexual prowess may have gotten her killed. Rough play, a nasty custody battle and a kiddie porn ring are just a few of the sordid highlights in this highly charged tale. Some may find the revelation of the killer's identity anticlimactic, yet still be sufficiently satisfied by this classy and compelling psychoerotic suspense tale. 6-city author tour.

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
*Starred Review* Edgar winner Bayer writes a psychoerotic thriller that, in a detective's yearning for a glamorous beauty murdered when he was only a boy, conjures up the classic film Laura. Bayer, whose previous novels star NYPD detective Frank Janek, makes a startling yet satisfying departure this time, introducing a new hero, forensic sketch artist David Weiss, who specializes in ID portraiture and whose particular gift is "that slow accretion of detail that can bring a portrait of a criminal to life." Weiss is back in his midwestern hometown (a fictional composite of various midwestern towns Bayer has known), doing courtroom portraits in a murder trial for ABC. What has drawn him to this assignment is the chance to revisit the scene of another murder, that of a socialite and her lower-class lover, who were killed in a motel room. Through sketching and interviews, Weiss picks up the pieces that his psychiatrist father, the socialite's shrink, couldn't fit together. Behind the murder is another tragedy, the kidnapping of the woman's three-year-old child, a crime still unsolved. As Weiss moves through the cold case, he becomes darkly entangled with the glamorous murder victim. The old mystery leads to current crimes, as Weiss' own life and sanity are jeopardized. Richly atmospheric. Connie Fletcher
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