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A Writing Life Imitates Art – Publishers Weekly

By Karen Holt Jonathan Santlofer writes his heroes tall. “I’m 5’7″ so I like to compensate,” he says. And he writes them brave, something else he insists he’s not. “I’m a big baby. If I see a knife on the table, I think it’s going to jump up and stab me.” But Santlofer and his characters do have one thing, a big one, in common—a preoccupation with art. In his mysteries, art fuels everything that matters. Killers conflate violence with artistic expression, while the good guys look to visual art for clues to catch the villains. As for Santlofer, he was a successful painter for decades before he became an author. He has been pursuing both careers since publishing his first mystery, The Death Artist, in 2002. With his fourth book, Anatomy of Fear (Morrow, Apr.) he combines his two talents, in what the publisher is calling “a novel of visual suspense.” A police sketch … Read more

A Painter Writes of Murder Among the Abstract Expressionists – The New York Times

By Carol Kino Can artists control the way history records them? How do some manipulate their legends – and what fate befalls those who can’t, or who loathe the very idea? Such questions, fodder for much contemporary art gossip and art historical research, fuel “The Killing Art,” by Jonathan Santlofer, a New York painter who has increased his own fame and fortune recently by writing murder mysteries set in the New York art world. Unlike his previous two books, however, Mr. Santlofer’s new tale is rooted in a real-life art historical episode: a gathering of Abstract Expressionist artists in April 1950. There, the unpleasant reality unfolded that by the end some artists would be in and some out. And the anointed were depicted a few months later in an iconic photograph in Life magazine. That meeting has been documented, most recently in “De Kooning: An American Master,” a 2004 biography by Mark Stevens and Annalyn … Read more