What is Casey Doran reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Casey Doran, author of The Art of Murder: Jericho Sands Book 2.

His entry begins:

I recently finished Chuck Palahniuk’s Choke. I’ve actually read this book three or four times, but one of the things that I love about it is with every new pass, I find another element or device that I missed on previous reads. Choke features Palahniuk’s trademark style. No word is wasted. The story is minimalist and to the point, but still multilayered and complex. It also has one of my favorite opening lines:

“If you’re going to read this...[read on]

About The Art of Murder, from the publisher:

Jericho Sands has spent the past nine months in Mexico getting in bar fights with shark poachers, drinking tequila and listening to wolves howl outside the walls of the beachfront shack he’s been calling home. He’s living completely ‘off the grid’; no power, no phone, nothing but nagging questions about who he is and how far he allowed himself to fall for a woman who proved to be a serial killer hell-bent on revenge. He’s struggled with his decision to let Alyssa Jagger live. Was it because he realized that revenge does not equal justice? Or did he spare her life because deep down, in a dark place he doesn’t want to explore, he allowed himself to fall for her and could not bring himself to be her executioner.

Jericho’s self-imposed exile is ended when he learns about the murder of his best friend and father figure, Gus Tanner. Gunshots fired in a dark alley force Jericho back to the city he left behind and he soon discovers that a new killer is making himself known, a daring young painter who uses the blood of his victims as the medium for his works of art. The butcher who the media dubs ‘The DaVinci of Death’, leaves his handiwork on the front door of a new art gallery and demands that it be displayed, or else more macabre works will follow. Katrina Masters, the owner of the gallery and Jericho’s old flame, refuses to be blackmailed, enraging the killer who is determined to make the town appreciate his talents. Even if it kills them all.

While facing the fallout from everything he left behind, Jericho must also deal with a new police chief with a personal vendetta, detectives who prove incapable of stopping the killer, his resurrected feelings for Katrina Masters and his conflicted feelings for Alyssa Jagger. To find the killer, Jericho must continue going down roads he does not want travel. He must commit to choices that will forever determine who he truly is. And this time, there will be going back.

Learn more about The Art of Murder, and follow Casey Doran on Twitter.

My Book, The Movie: The Art of Murder.

The Page 69 Test: The Art of Murder.

Writers Read: Casey Doran.

--Marshal Zeringue