Product Description

Ethan Muller is struggling to establish his reputation as a dealer in the cut-throat world of contemporary art when he is alerted to a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: in a decaying New York slum, an elderly tenant has disappeared, leaving behind a staggeringly large trove of original drawings and paintings. Nobody can tell Ethan much about the old man, except that he came and went in solitude for nearly forty years, his genius hidden and unacknowledged. Despite the fact that, strictly speaking, the artwork doesn't belong to him, Ethan takes the challenge and makes a name for the old man - and himself. Soon Ethan has to congratulate himself on his own genius: for storytelling and salesmanship. But suddenly the police are interested in talking to him. It seems that the missing artist had a nasty past, and the drawings hanging in the Muller Gallery have begun to look a lot less like art and a lot more like evidence. Sucked into an investigation four decades cold, Ethan will uncover a secret legacy of shame and death, one that will touch horrifyingly close to home - and leave him fearing for his own life.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8265 in Books
• Published on: 2008-12-29
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

Review
'Literate and thought-provoking...Kellerman is a master of menace' Daily Mail 'A most accomplished novel by a writer of great imagination and skill' Sunday Telegraph 'An enthralling, character-driven drama' Daily Record 'Kellerman has a gift for creating compelling characters as well as for crafting an ingenious plot that grabs the reader and refuses to let go.' Publishers Weekly

Harlan Coben
`Gripping and compelling...Kellerman is, simply put, a wonderful writer'

Scottish Daily Record
`an enthralling, character-driven drama that proves the son of Faye and Jonathan Kellerman is a chip off the old block'

Customer Reviews

A Chip off the old Blocks
So often one picks up a book written by the son, daughter, partner or sibling of a famous author and ends up feeling disappointed by either the quality of plot or the quality of writing - or both. There is always the fear that the only reason why their work has been published is because of some form of nepotism. When I picked up Jesse Kellerman's first novel eighteen months ago, I was doubly unsure, as both his parents are well known thriller writers (Jonathan and Faye Kellerman); however, I need not have worried. Jesse is a gifted author in his own right. Along with his two other books, his third published novel, The Brutal Art, is in no way a disappointment. Elements of both parents writing, along with a strong writing style of his own, make Jesse Kellerman's work a pleasure to read.

This novel opens with the discovery of a huge number of pieces of amazing works of modern art in a small flat - panels that fit together to create a mammoth scene, created by a man named Victor Cracke - who has totally disappeared. Before long, art dealer Ethan Muller has set up an exhibition, and the work is selling well. However, a retired police officer sees a photo of the central panel in the newspaper, and the search for the missing artist rapidly moves into a murder mystery as Ethan discovers that the cherubs at the centre of the work closely resemble five young boys, murdered many years earlier.

Did Victor murder them? Indeed, who was Victor Cracke? Why has he disappeared, and where has he gone? Why are so many people interested in him, and what connection does he have with Muller's own family history?
All these questions - and more - are answered in this intriguing novel as we find out more about Ethan Muller - about why he is so estranged from his own family - and about Victor Cracke himself; a victim of circumstances in many ways.

All in all, a very good read and well worth a try.

ANOTHER KELLERMAN ON THE SCENE
Faye and Jonathan Kellerman are both bestselling thriller writers, but it seems that their greatest contribution to the genre could well be their son, Jesse, whose latest psychological drama is as startlingly original as his first two. This author, already an award-winning playwright, has no need of blood, bullets, guts and gore to build tension; he knows exactly which buttons to push to keep readers anxiously engaged - even when the plot apparently involves nothing more sinister than a New York art gallery owner, Ethan Muller, who discovers a cache of brilliant but disturbing drawings by a mysterious artist who has since disappeared. Ethan puts the pictures on show, and they start to sell for large sums. But then it begins to emerge that the artist could have been involved in a series of brutal child murders 40 years before, and the drawings might even be evidence. Kellerman writes with grace and style, and shows very nimble creative footwork when long buried secrets about Ethan's own family begin inexorably to break into the fictions so carefully constructed by people who want the past to remain somewhere else.

Disjointed Storyline + Cliched Characters = Awful Read
First things first, by using a similar cover and suggesting on the back cover that 'The Brutal Art will appeal to anyone who enjoyed The Interpretation of Murder', the publishers are clearly keen to trap the unwary. Be warned, apart from both being set in New York and having murder at their core, the two books are nothing alike. For readers looking for an excellent read in the same vein as 'TIOM' I can't recommend Caleb Carr's The Alienist highly enough.

'The Brutal Art' starts promisingly, Kellerman's writing is readable enough and the story is based on an interesting premise: An art dealer coming across a picture that turns out to be intrinsically linked to a series of child-murders. Unfortunately, the story the author then constructs could have been worked out on the back of a fag packet.

The characters are annoying and two dimensional, and the plot threads clichéd in the extreme. We have, overbearing mothers, poor-man-made-good, child abuse, a secret past locked away, a central character who is torn between two loves and of course, a retired cop, desperate to catch the one that got away. Apart from the drawing that is central to the plot, 'The Brutal Art' contains almost nothing original.

The story, after threatening to be interesting in the first third of the novel, ultimately goes nowhere, and the narrative structure is really irritating. The whole thing reads as though Kellerman, has heard that historical/present day, crime crossovers, sell well, but doesn't have the first idea how to write one.

The main narrative (narrated poorly, in the first person) is broken up, apparently randomly, by excerpts from the narrator's family history. These snippets however, are not uncovered during the investigations of the person telling the story, they have just been shoved into the main story whenever the author needs to tell the reader something important. Kellerman has chosen to write the bulk of the novel in the first person, but is then hamstrung by this decision, when he wants to reveal facts about the past. The result is a disjointed novel.

'The Brutal Art' has been picked up by the Richard and Judy Book Club. Considering that in the past they have chosen acclaimed novels such as 'Cloud Atlas' and 'The Time Traveller's Wife', and this year's list includes the latest Kate Atkinson, this book seems a strange choice and makes for a very poor bedfellow. I'm sure many will disagree with me, but please, avoid this book.