Murder As A Fine Art
By David Morrell
It’s London in 1854 and a killer
has murdered a family of five people with the threat of more killings to come. It
seems to be the work of a monster, yet in the result are the machinations of a
person who strives to craft his brutality into a composition of scene, design,
light, sentient sentiment. It’s almost artistry in the mind of the killer. Is
this an original? Or is the killer copying the serial killings that terrorized
London 40 years earlier? If a copy, there are more to come, and the residents
are becoming stirred into a frenzy again as history seems to be repeating
itself.
To catch this cunning executioner,
it will take a smart and unorthodox group of investigators who can imagine themselves
into the mind of a serial killer. By 1854 a detective bureau was created to
supplement the overtaxed police in London’s fast growing population. It included
eight plainclothes officers who investigated in disguise, and this case was
assigned to two of these men who were extolled for their extraordinary
attention to detail and analytical skills, while being held under morbid
suspicion by many of the population who feared their prying eyes.
The detectives match their wits,
and the tools of the infancy of forensic science, against evil. They add to
their arsenal an unlikely father and daughter. He is known as the Opium Eater,
and the books he writes and publishes are known as “novels of sensation”. One
is a disturbing essay dramatizing the infamous Ratcliffe Highway killings of
1811. What’s described is eerily similar to these recent murders. His daughter
is his companion and helper, and she is a remarkably un-Victorian woman. Her
theories and observations on the case are insightful.
The
author, David Morrell is such a gifted writer. The scenes and the characters
leap to life from the page to the reader’s imagination. He’s been
called the Father of modern action novels. Back in 1972, he wrote a book with
an unusual and iconic hero. That book was First
Blood, and the iconic hero, a returned Vietnam veteran with PTSD, was
Rambo. After writing the ground-breaking story of one of the best-known and
most iconic anti-heroes, he has followed that with so many action and
historical mystery and thriller best-sellers.
He’s been a
finalist for the Edgar, Anthony, Thriller and Arthur Ellis awards, and won the Nero
and Macavity awards, as well as being a three-time recipient of the esteemed
Bram Stoker Award from the Horror Writers Association. The Bouchercon
Conference gave him its Lifetime Achievement Award among many recognitions. He’s
also a gifted teacher of writing, with a Ph.D in American Literature, and he
co-founded the renowned International Thriller Writers organization with author
Gayle Lynds.
And if
you want to hear more from the author listen on YouTube to Kendall &
Cooper Talk Mysteries with David Morrell
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