In this fascinating psychological neo-noir mystery, a notorious late 19th-century photograph provides the key to a contemporary murder.
1882: Lou Andreas-Salome appears with Friedrich Nietzche in a photograph. Thirty years later, a student presents Salome with his own drawing of the photograph. Present Day: Tess's life is put in jeopardy when the previous owner of her new Californian loft is found dead, and she uncovers a link to the Luzern photograph and the 1913 drawing.
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Summary
In this fascinating psychological neo-noir mystery, a notorious late 19th-century photograph provides the key to a contemporary murder.
1882: Lou Andreas-Salome appears with Friedrich Nietzche in a photograph. Thirty years later, a student presents Salome with his own drawing of the photograph. Present Day: Tess's life is put in jeopardy when the previous owner of her new Californian loft is found dead, and she uncovers a link to the Luzern photograph and the 1913 drawing.
Description
In this fascinating psychological neo-noir mystery, a notorious late 19th-century photograph provides the key to a contemporary murder. In 1882, the young Lou Andreas-Salome, writer, psychoanalyst and femme fatale, appears with Friedrich Nietzche and another man in a bizarre photograph taken in Luzern, Switzerland. Over thirty years later, an intense art student in Freud's Vienna presents Lou Salome with his own drawing based on the infamous photograph. In the present day, Tess Berenson, a brilliant performance artist, moves into an art deco loft in downtown Oakland, California. Her new apartment, she learns, was vacated in a hurry by a professional dominatrix who used the name Chantal Desforges. Tess's curiosity about Chantal intensifies when her body is discovered in the trunk of a stolen car at Oakland airport. Embarking on an obsessive investigation into the murder, Tess discovers a link to the original Luzern photograph and the 1913 drawing - but as she gets closer to the shocking truth, Tess finds that she too is in jeopardy.
Critic Reviews
“"In this clever psychological thriller, Bayer chillingly and skillfully depicts the divide between good and evil. Suggest to Thomas Harris and Michael Connelly devotees."”
"Bayer keeps the suspense high as he artfully toggles among story lines and thoughtfully develops his characters" Publishers Weekly "Edgar winner Bayer (The Dream of Broken Horses, 2002, etc.) continues his romance with psychoanalysis with a riff on Lou Andreas-Salome's persona as analyst and femme fatale ... Nazis, sadomasochism, and psychoanalysis always provide a heady mix, and a little murder thrown in pushes Bayer's latest into the radioactive zone." -- Kirkus Reviews "In this clever psychological thriller, Bayer chillingly and skillfully depicts the divide between good and evil. Suggest to Thomas Harris and -Michael Connelly devotees." Library Journal Starred Review
About the Author
William Bayer is the author of the Edgar Award?winning novel "Peregrine, " which introduced NYPD detective Frank Janek, the central character of four subsequent thrillers, among them the New York Times bestseller Switch. Pattern Crimes was also a "New York Times" bestseller. More recently, under the pen name David Hunt, Bayer wrote two thrillers featuring color-blind photographer Kay Farrow: "The Magician's Tale, " which was a "New York Times" Notable Book of the Year and won the Lambda Literary Award for Best Mystery, and "Trick of Light." Bayer lives in San Francisco with his wife, cookbook
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