Anatomy of Fear

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.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Fiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.