{"id":8807,"date":"2021-01-28T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-01-28T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8807"},"modified":"2021-01-27T16:49:20","modified_gmt":"2021-01-27T21:49:20","slug":"the-art-of-violence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8807","title":{"rendered":"The Art of Violence"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"The<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

By SJ Rozan \u2013 Here\u2019s the latest in SJ Rozan\u2019s popular series featuring private investigators and romantic partners Bill Smith and Lydia Chin. Former client Sam Tabor has recently been released from the Green Haven Correctional Facility, where he was serving time for the stabbing death of a young woman during a party where someone put PCP in the punch. Mentally unstable in the best of times, the drug had a powerful effect on him, and the woman\u2019s death devastated him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The reclusive Sam has been an artist his whole life, but kept his work private until one of his Green Haven therapists made him into a cause c\u00e9l\u00e8bre. The cynical Manhattan art community latched onto him and his work, \u201cfull of blood and destruction.\u201d It ginned up a successful campaign for Sam\u2019s early release. Now he\u2019s a reluctant art-world phenomenon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As he says to Bill, \u2018A jury might have bought the idea I was temporarily out of my mind, but the point, like you say, the point is, I really am out of my mind.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since Sam returned to Manhattan, two young women bearing a remarkable resemblance to the earlier victim have been murdered. Sam can\u2019t remember a thing about either evening\u2014the drinking and blackouts don\u2019t help\u2014and he\u2019s afraid he killed them. To stop the murders, Sam wants Bill to prove he\u2019s the killer, so he can be taken off the streets. He\u2019s tried turning himself in to the police, but they aren\u2019t interested. An NYPD detective, under pressure to arrest Sam, thinks he\u2019s a \u201cfreaking lunatic,\u201d but doesn\u2019t fit the serial killer profile. Meanwhile, several people in Sam\u2019s life have reasons to want him in the frame for these new murders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An especially appealing aspect of this story is the sympathetic touch with which Rozan portrays Sam and his confusion. He\u2019s the antithesis of the self-justifying (\u201cshe deserved it\u201d), self-glorifying killers typical of this genre. In a way, he\u2019s like the patient in the psychological thriller Primary Obsessions<\/a><\/em>, whose violent thoughts are just that, thoughts, not deeds. In Sam\u2019s case, the dark thoughts are manifested in his art. Even so, as evidence mounts, the NYPD spotlight turns inevitably toward him, and it would be easy for Sam to talk his way right back into prison. Bill and Lydia need to move fast to stop that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By SJ Rozan \u2013 Here\u2019s the latest in SJ Rozan\u2019s popular series featuring private investigators and romantic partners Bill Smith and Lydia Chin. Former client Sam Tabor has recently been released from the Green Haven Correctional Facility, where he was … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"The Art of Violence SJ Rozan's popular detective team of Bill Smith and Lydia Chin are called on to help a mentally unstable man determined to implicate himself in crimes he may not have committed.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[52,54,682,126],"tags":[1813,581,1417],"class_list":["post-8807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime","category-detective","category-fine-arts","category-reading-2","tag-art-of-violence","tag-manhattan","tag-sj-rozan"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2i3","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8807"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8807\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8809,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8807\/revisions\/8809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}