Page 99: "Anatomy of Fear"

I posted the results of the Page 99 Test on Jonathan Santlofer's Anatomy of Fear earlier this week. The book hits bookstores in April.

The publisher's description:

Jonathan Santlofer uses his formidable skills, both as a writer and an artist, to create a unique thriller with a tantalizing concept: two men — one good, one evil — who think in pictures and whose drawings illustrate this gripping novel. Anatomy of Fear pits Santlofer's new hero, the talented and highly successful police sketch artist Nate Rodriguez, against a vicious murderer who makes portraits of his victims before he kills them.

Haunted by the death of his father, an NYPD undercover narc, Nate has avoided the action and buried his emotions behind his pads and pencils for years. But that's all about to change. Brought onto the case to draw the face of a man no one has lived to see, Nate is pulled into the dark and twisted mind of a killer. As the portrait comes to Nate in bits and pieces — a face taking shape in his mind and on the page — the killer uses his own talents to shift the focus of the investigation in a startling and unexpected way. Each drawing moves the men ever closer to each other in a terrifying game of cat and mouse with deadly consequences.

Jonathan Santlofer has crafted a brilliant and original suspense novel that mixes prose and pictures, love and hate, cold reality and mysticism, and finally redemption. Anatomy of Fear will have readers on the edge of their seats from the first page — and first picture — to the riveting climax.

Visit Santlofer's official website, and read his take on the Page 99 and Page 69 Tests.

Check out what he and Diane Keaton had to say to each other in 1998 about art and movies.

Jonathan Santlofer is a highly respected artist whose work has been written about and reviewed in the New York Times, Art in America, Artforum, and Arts and appears in many public, private, and corporate collections such as Chase Manhattan Bank and the Art Institute of Chicago. He serves on the board of Yaddo, one of the oldest artist communities in the country.

Anatomy of Fear is his fourth novel.

--Marshal Zeringue