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Widowed, ex-New York cop-turned art historian Kate McKinnon is researching a book on the New York School of Abstract Expressionist painters, who started working during the 1930s and continued on through the 1950s and after, to be a companion to her public television series. She drives out to Eastern Long Island, past the Pollock-Krasner house, to the studio of 94-year-old Philip Zander, the last living artist of the group which included Pollock, Krasner, Rothko, de Kooning, Motherwell, Gorky, Kline, and Reinhardt among others. When she arrives, Zander stalls by telling her stories of the more famous members of the group, hoping to deflect her from his true story. She persists, but gets nowhere. Then his young assistant comes in with some supplies and new CDs, and after a brief conversation with Jules, Kate leaves, vowing to return until she gets the information she needs. As she is exiting the house, her cell phone rings. It is Detective Monty Murphy, who, since the last round of budget cuts, is the entire NYPD Art Squad. He asks her to stop by his office, where he shows her the photos of a slashed painting at the Modernist Museum. It is the de Kooning that Kate donated to the museum after the murder of her husband, wealthy attorney Richard Rothstein. She learns it is not the first painting of that school to be damaged recently. Two weeks previously, a Pollock hanging in the corporate offices of a large law firm had been slashed in the same way. Later that night, on Long Island, another painting, a Kline, is slashed, but this time, the owner is also slashed and murdered. The culprit is expanding to include murder, and Kate and Murphy must work faster to figure out the clues in the black and white paintings sent to each victim before the crime takes place. I have always learned arcane bits of history from reading novels. History from Thomas Costain, all about pirates from Frank Yerby, and now about abstract expression art from Jonathan Santlofer, himself an artist, who gives us clues to the crimes by putting original paintings in the text. I missed the previous two adventures with Kate McKinnon but from reading the reviews, I probably didn't miss much. This book, however, gives us a good story with asides about the mid-century artist's life in New York City. THE KILLING ART is a good place to start Santlofer's work. It has a strong female lead along with some great information about art and artists.
Reviewed by Barbara Franchi, September 2005
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