The Genius Hardback - 2008

by Jesse Kellerman

The sinister and provocative thriller fromcrime writing's freshest new voice.Ethan Muller is struggling to establish his reputation asa dealer in the cut-throat world of contemporary art,when he stumbles onto a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity:in a decaying New York slum, an elderly tenant named VictorCracke has disappeared, leaving behind a staggeringly largetrove of original artwork. Nobody can say anything for certainabout Cracke, except that he came and went in solitude fornearly forty years, his genius hidden and unacknowledged.All that is about to change.So what if, strictly speaking, the art doesn't belong toEthan? He can sell it and he does just that, mounting a wildlysuccessful show. Buyers clamor. Critics sing. Museums are interested,and Ethan's photo looks great in The New York Times.Then things go to hell.Suddenly the police want to talk to him. It seems that VictorCracke had a nasty past, and the drawings hanging in the MullerGallery have begun to look a lot less like art and a lot more likeevidence.Is Victor Cracke a genius? A murderer? Both? Is therea difference? Sucked into an investigation four decades cold,Ethan will uncover a secret legacy of shame and death, one thattouches horrifyingly close to home.Kellerman's tight, assured prose is electrifying, exhilarating,and compulsively readable. Part confessional, part philosophicalinquiry, Stop is the detective novel reimagined likenever before.