Bruce Elliot - Still Life

The line between artistic vision and insanity has been violently crossed. Mutilated bodies are being discovered almost daily-their gruesome remains meticulously arranged into grotesque shapes and forms.

Detective Amiel "Touch" Benson wants to stop him. To do so, he will have to work with the one person whom the artist confides in-radio psychologist Teri Fields, whose show the killer calls to let Benson know where the next corpse is located. They must race against time, for true art waits for no one-and there is a master at work.

His canvas: the city of Los Angeles.
His inspiration: the dying screams of his victims.
His passion: to create a masterpiece of death no one will ever forget.

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When the famous The Dr. Teri Fields Show airs as usual everyone considered the last evenings call a huge prank announcing he's killed someone.
Very soon the listeners learn it was no prank at all.
A beautiful young girl has been found dead in her apartment. Her angelic features only disturbed through a fine cut through her throat, posing like an angel on her bed in clean sheets. Entering her bathroom detectives find a gruesome scenery of blood and stench. The victim has been drained of blood and was cleaned afterwards.

Detective Amiel ("Touch") Benson and his partner Amanda Blaine work the case and their first response is talking to the radio shows host Dr. Teri Fields who seems mighty disturbed by the last nights call and it's trueness.

The crimes scene otherwise seems clean except for some dust left by a drawing pen. The two detectives are clueless that they are in for a ride into the world of art and a disturbed killer artist meticulously working his scene.

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Our protagonists are very likeable and human. Amiel, nickmaned Touch, is married to Liz, who suffers from bipolar disorder. They are still married but separated. Touch can't let go of her but secretly desires his beautiful partner Amanda who carries a package of her own. She is married to a man she loves but doesn't fulfill her needs.
They work together, dream of each other but they don't touch each other.
They both are very human, especially Touch who cares for his wife who rewards him with sugar but mostly vinegar.
When Touch meets the hypnotizing Dr. Fields he fells for her hard enough to almost screw up the whole investigation, Amanda's and his own career.
Their flaws make you want to read and learn more of them. Especially how their life went after the book.

Still Life is the first book in what was thought to be a series but unfortunately there has only been a second book since 2002 named Death Rites.


Rating:

Paperback: 384 pages
Publisher: Onyx (May 8, 2001)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0451409841
ISBN-13: 978-0451409843