Product Description

New York Times bestselling author William Bayer, described by Robert B. Parker as "a first-rate master of heart-pounding suspense," returns with this breathtaking, multilayered new tale of a twenty-five-year-old society murder and the many long shadows it still casts.

A man and a woman are making love....

One hot summer afternoon a quarter century ago, a wealthy socialite and her young lover, a private-school teacher, were gunned down in a cheap motel room on the outskirts of the Midwestern city of Calista. Now, forensic sketch artist David Weiss has returned to his hometown to cover a routine celebrity murder trial for ABC. For someone who has earned a reputation for cracking high-profile cases with his portraits of suspects based on eyewitness accounts, churning out courtroom sketches is merely pedestrian work. But Calista holds other attractions for David. First there are the welcome attentions of CNN reporter Pam Wells. Then there's the notoriously unsolved double murder at the Flamingo Court motel that has haunted him since boyhood.

Like his psychoanalyst father before him, David becomes obsessed with one of the Flamingo victims, Barbara Fulraine -- who was as fascinating as she was enigmatic -- and with the bizarre circle of friends, gangsters, columnists, and lovers who surrounded her. David's father believed that if he could unlock Barbara's troubling, recurring nightmare -- which she called "the dream of the broken horses" -- his solution would mark a watershed in his career. Now David, armed with old news clippings and police interviews, as well as an extraordinary psychological case study of Mrs. Fulraine recently discovered among his deceased father's effects, seeks to use his highly honed professional skills to reassemble the face of her killer. But with each eyewitness interview and each fresh stroke of his pencil, David finds himself being hurled down a path of ever-darkening mystery, obsession, and dread.

One of our most elegant and commanding writers of psycho-erotic suspense, William Bayer has crafted a riveting, sharp-edged psychological thriller, perhaps his finest, most compelling work to date.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #843929 in Books
• Published on: 2007-08-24
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

Amazon.com Review
Penzler Pick, March 2002: Among William Bayer's remarkable novels, many involve the sense of sight--the way in which we see things. Under the pseudonym David Hunt, for example, he wrote The Magician's Tale and Trick of Light, both of which feature a colorblind photographer. Now again using his own name, Bayer delves once more into the realm of the senses.

David Weiss, like his creator, is a talented courtroom sketch artist. David has returned to his hometown in the Midwest to cover the trial of a performance artist accused of killing her rock-star lover. The national media are there and soon David becomes involved with the female reporter for CNN. As fascinated as he is with the trial and with his new romance, it is an earlier murder in this town that he obsesses about. When David was a boy, the socialite mother of one of his school friends was gunned down in a motel room with her lover. Barbara Fulraine already had known tragedy when her daughter was abducted and murdered several years before. In addition, the young lover gunned down with her was David's tennis teacher. It is the stuff of young boys' fantasies.

But David has an even closer connection: His father, a therapist, was treating Barbara Fulraine for her depression when she was murdered. David's father felt he could help Mrs. Fulraine if only he could unlock her recurring nightmare, a dream about broken horses. But Barbara died before he could do it and, soon afterwards, David's father committed suicide. The gunman, although glimpsed by several people, was never identified.

As an adult, David realizes that he saw all these events through an impressionable boy's eyes. Now he wants to reexamine that case through his adult eyes and discover who gunned down that couple in the motel room. Using his father's notes and taking time out from the trial to interview people who lived in the town at the time, David sketches the memories he digs up until a picture begins to emerge, a picture that may well put David's life in danger if the murderer is still living in the town.

Bayer's talent as a writer and a storyteller is extraordinary. He manages to convey the media circus surrounding the current trial (which has a surprising outcome) with the quiet stillness of a story that has remained buried just beneath the surface of the town's history for many years. --Otto Penzler

From Publishers Weekly
The investigation into a 25-year-old double murder of a wealthy socialite and her young lover is renewed with vigor in this sharp and sexy thriller from Edgar award-winning author Bayer (Peregrine; Switch). When Barbara Fulraine and her lover, Tom Jessup, were gunned down in the cheap Flamingo Court motel in the fictional Midwestern city of Calista, David Weiss was just a young boy. Soon after the homicides, David's father, who is also Barbara's therapist, committed suicide. Now, 25 years later, David is a forensic sketch artist who returns to Calista to cover a celebrity murder trial. While there, he becomes obsessed with the unresolved local scandal of the Flamingo murders, convinced Barbara Fulraine's death was the cause of his family's breakup. He interviews a handful of upper-crust locals as well as residents from the seedier side of town, all of whom seem intent on leaving the past alone. Just as the trail of clues grows cold and David's life is endangered, he comes upon Barbara Fulraine's diary from that time. He begins to unravel the history of the mysterious and erotic woman whose sexual prowess may have gotten her killed. Rough play, a nasty custody battle and a kiddie porn ring are just a few of the sordid highlights in this highly charged tale. Some may find the revelation of the killer's identity anticlimactic, yet still be sufficiently satisfied by this classy and compelling psychoerotic suspense tale. 6-city author tour.

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
*Starred Review* Edgar winner Bayer writes a psychoerotic thriller that, in a detective's yearning for a glamorous beauty murdered when he was only a boy, conjures up the classic film Laura. Bayer, whose previous novels star NYPD detective Frank Janek, makes a startling yet satisfying departure this time, introducing a new hero, forensic sketch artist David Weiss, who specializes in ID portraiture and whose particular gift is "that slow accretion of detail that can bring a portrait of a criminal to life." Weiss is back in his midwestern hometown (a fictional composite of various midwestern towns Bayer has known), doing courtroom portraits in a murder trial for ABC. What has drawn him to this assignment is the chance to revisit the scene of another murder, that of a socialite and her lower-class lover, who were killed in a motel room. Through sketching and interviews, Weiss picks up the pieces that his psychiatrist father, the socialite's shrink, couldn't fit together. Behind the murder is another tragedy, the kidnapping of the woman's three-year-old child, a crime still unsolved. As Weiss moves through the cold case, he becomes darkly entangled with the glamorous murder victim. The old mystery leads to current crimes, as Weiss' own life and sanity are jeopardized. Richly atmospheric. Connie Fletcher
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

Quest for the hidden...
William Bayer as a mytery writer is rather unique, in that his characters for the most part are more involved with an internal psychological mystery than they are with the solution of any particular case. There is plenty of action to be found in his books, his dialogue is sharp and clever and his plots are sophisticated, but beneath the flow of events, there is usually a hidden quest that is far more intriguing. The obsession of David with an ancient murder stems from obscure elements in his own psyche. The use of photography in Bayer's novels is telling, as it signifies the character of one who is consumed with human nature and yet who is compelled on some fundamental level to place the barrier of an artificial lens between himself and life. David, by exploring the history of a woman murdered long ago, forces her to strip and uncover all of her secrets. At the same time, in pursuing the mystery of her death, he exposes his own soul and deepest desires to himself and to the reader. All photographers are voyeurs to some extent; Bayer's character, however, is a voyeur of the deepest recesses and impulses of human nature. Needless to say, given the author's love of and affinity with film noir, those impulses and desires tend to be the darker ones, and the inevitable exposure of such impulses and acts usually does not occur as a willing
strip-tease.

Hard to put down
Since his childhood, forensic artist David Weiss has been obsessed with a society double-murder that implicated his father and drove the man to suicide. Now, Weiss is back in his childhood home of Calista (a mythical midwestern town) and intends to use his time to discover the truth. The murder may be decades old but Weiss is certain that the easy explanations are wrong--that something more profound remains to be found.

Weiss's investigations lead him to stories of sexual obsession, child pornography, and blackmail. There are plenty of motives for murder--and even after all the years that have passed, some still living are willing to take action to stop the investigation and protect their secrets. With the help of a case writeup by his father and one of the victim's intimate diary, Weiss learns a great deal about the people who were killed, but nothing points a certain finger at the actual killer.

Author William Bayer's strong writing makes THE DREAM OF THE BROKEN HORSES something special and something far stronger than the story that underlies it. In some ways, the actual story is frustrating and important loose ends remain. Bayer's use of diary to develop character and reveal clues would normally be a cheat. Somehow, however, Bayer pulls it off. The powerful character of Barbara Fulraine (one of the victims) dominates the novel and the lives of many of the survivors. Her dream of broken horses may have been a psychiatrist's wish fulfilment, but it is also a sad reflection of the painful life Barbara endured.

THE DREAM OF THE BROKEN HORSES is a hard book to put down. Although most of the action takes place in back story, Bayer's writing is so compelling that I found myself reading on compulsively. Very fine.

At last... a new William Bayer suspense yarn!
Being a longtime William Bayer fan, I eagerly await each new novel. The wait for "The Dream of the Broken Horses" was a long one -- but definitely well worth it. The book is beautifully written (as always), well crafted (as always), and keeps you intrigued to the very last page. Just when you think you've figured out who did it, how, and why, Mr. Bayer again proves why he's the writer and we're the readers!

For any fan of erotic suspense or psycological crime, or for someone just looking for a great read, don't miss this book. We can only hope Mr Bayer won't make us wait so long for the next one.

Buy it & read it...now!