Customer Reviews

The Murder Notebook: A Novel of Suspense

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3 star:		(1)
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Nate Rodriguez is a forensics sketch artist who works freelance. He is still dealing with the death of his father a few years ago. He and his mother don't have much to say to one another since that time. Deep down Nate feels guilty about the death.

Terri Russo is Nate's girlfriend. She works for a task force for one of the departments. As the leader of the task force, she has three men under her. Terri and Nate don't tell others they are a couple and try not to work together unless necessary.

Nate gets assigned a skull to recreate. It is a "John Doe," and they feel he may be the person to figure out whose skull it was. Terri is coming across people dead. She needs help with the case and hires Nate to help her. Nate is taken off working on the skull but now works on it in his free time. He and Terri are questioning people when another body turns up dead.

Nate's mom comes to town for a visit. He introduces Terri and they hit it off. Nate thinks this is finally his one shot to talk to his mom about his dad's death. Just when he gets the nerve he backs down. Mom leaves with the words still unspoken between the two of them.

They are not getting answers as quickly as they need them, so Nate takes to the streets to find answers. He finally finds what he's looking for. The only problem is getting the task force to see the clues for what they really mean.

With all the sketches and clues, Nate finally figures it out. Then when the skull is all done, a bell goes off in Nate's head. Now after all these years since his dad's death, there might be another break in that case as well.

I love how you see the sketches and the book tells you how to recreate a skull. The book is very interesting and keeps you turning the pages.

Armchair Interviews says: Another page-turner.

NYPD forensic artist Nate Rodriguez is in demand. Bronx Lieutenant Bill Guthrie wants him to do a facial reconstruction of a skull with bullet holes that was also burned in a fire. Chief of Deportment Perry Denton wants his help on the case of a murdered student who turned hi back on the ghettand won a schiolarship at City University.

Nate interviews the dead student's girlfriend who describes a man who picked a fight with her boyfriend for no apparent reason. The sketch evidently leads the police to the killer who ends up committing suicide. That should have proven the end of the case, but soon afterward another murder-suicide occurs with echoes of the most important elements of the first incident. Guthrie tells Rodriguez to drop the case of the skull, but the artist works on it anyway because he feels compelled to finish the job. More murder-suicide crimes occurred and Nate convinces his peers they are linked, but no one knows how; besides the FBI takes charge. Nate risks his career with the help of police officer Terri Russo to solve the case, but soon realizes their lives on the line from a DARPA conspiracy to conceal the truth.

The link the cases have in common is horrific and chilling because it is believable. THE MURDER NOTEBOOK is an extraordinary police procedural as the protagonist on a quest for justice and follows the clues one step at a time with his keen artistic eye which is how they finally saw the links. It is a struggle for the police (not Nate) as clues are not linear and it takes intuition to skip the logical sequence. Jonathan Santlofer provides an enjoyable investigative tale.

Harriet Klausner

This is the first Jonathan Santlofer book I've ever purchased. It surely won't be the last.

I expected The Murder Notebook to be a good thriller. What I was unprepared for was the number of great sketches that came with the prose, and how being a police illustrator was so well woven into the story. When I finished the book, I reflected at how many of the books I read as a child or young man had ink or print illustrations and how that heightened the enjoyment of those books. It's a shame we don't have these today.

I also thought Santlofer did a good job of developing his characters and making us care about them. In this genre the literary sins are either breathless plotting (e.g., anything by Robert Ludlum or Dan Brown) or plots that are so overloaded they barely creak along. The author avoids both of those excesses. At the end of the book, we're ready for more, and we believe what we were given.

I really liked the sense of place in this book. He describes both police HQ's and Washington Square with equal amounts of believable detail.

I purchased this book because one of the editors at The Mysterious Bookstore commented favorabley upon it. I'm going out to buy the rest of this series now.

I will admit that this book captured my interest immediately as I thumbed through it in the bookstore. It is not a graphic novel but rather a novel with illustrations, and quite a large number of them. The illustrations are the work of the narrator, who is a police sketch artist in New York City.

As the novel begins, Nate Rodriguez has been asked to reconstruct a face based on a skull that has been found. He's then pulled off that case to work on the case of a murdered college student - followed by another similar murder. Meanwhile, Nate is dealing with guilt over his father's death (his father was a murdered narcotics detective) and trying to figure out his relationship with his cop girlfriend, to whom he can't quite utter what he calls the "L-word."

The illustrations are arresting (pardon the pun) and help carry the story along, but what I found most interesting is Nate's scientific background on reading people's facial expressions based on the behavior of their facial muscles. He refers quite a bit to the work of Paul Ekman, whose book I read a while ago.

The book is nicely paced but does take on a sort of conspiracy-laden, "the world is out to get me" tone that is not my favorite type of read. Writing is competent but not the kind that stops you in your tracks or impresses you; rather, it serves solely as a vehicle to tell the story. My biggest complaint is how much of the story is based on Nate's sixth-sense hunches about things, with ominous hints given by his santeria-practicing grandmother. I tend to be disappointed in stories in which plot resolution hinges on hunches, and that is the case here. The ending is a little too pat, as well; but then again the author should be commended for not leaving any loose ends dangling. Still, for the most part I enjoyed the book, which was something new under the sun. I'm just not sure that I found the series character of Nate Rodriguez intriguing enough to look for other books starring him.

Jonathan Santlofer NEVER fails to entertain. In "The Murder Notebook", the second in the Nate Rodriguez series, Santlofer once again combines his keen eye for artistry with his action packed story-telling style.

Featuring drawings, in the form of "police sketches", by Santlofer, the book moves like a freight train from the first page right on through. Un-put-downable!

I am anxiously awaiting the next thrilling installment in this series!

Jonathan Santlofer has done it again! I read this book in two days because I just didn't want to do anything else but be involved in this wandering, interesting, smart story. At times I was on the edge of my seat. Santlofer has a wonderful crisp style that makes you feel he is just talking to you. No extra words. No long descriptions. Kudos for doing this again, Mr. Santlofer!

The author once again uses his excellent talents as a writer and artist to create a spell-binding novel. A series of murders followed by the suicide of the killer baffles the police task force headed by Nate Rodriguez' girlfriend, Detective Terri Russo. Nate, of course, is the sketch artist whose insights, surpassed only by those of his witch-like grandmother, enable him to create likenesses so good that evil-doers are instantly recognized.

In this plot, his drawings are essential to the conclusion, as is his stubbornness to dog every possible clue and angle. It seems the victims and their killers are veterans of the Gulf War, suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Meanwhile, Nate continues to labor under the belief that he was responsible for the death of his father, an undercover narcotics cop, 20 years before.

This well-researched novel provides all the chills of a 1984 intrigue. The combination of fluid writing and the artwork moves the reader forward at a breathtaking pace. The characters are portrayed sharply and realistically. The book is accompanied by an extensive bibliography on various topics germane to the story. Highly recommended.

This is the second book I have read by this author. Keep them coming!

The metropolitan area in which I live is blessed with a college of art and design that, over the past 20 or so years, has acquired a fine national reputation. Lately, business matters have taken me past the school frequently. I have noticed during the course of each trip that a number of students have been carrying ANATOMY OF FEAR by Jonathan Santlofer. It is not surprising; in that fine novel Santlofer performed a fascinating interweaving of art and dialogue, making the art an integral part of the story. He performs similar magic, arguably on an even greater scale, in his latest work of fiction, THE MURDER NOTEBOOK.

While this is a sequel to ANATOMY OF FEAR, one can read it without having any familiarity with its predecessor. Santlofer does a fine job of filling the new reader in with respect to what has gone before in the life of NYPD sketch artist Nate Rodriguez. His creation is possessed of an uncanny, almost supernatural ability to bring out the best in witnesses --- including, at one point, himself --- and bringing their observations to the page. Rodriguez is also a gifted facial constructionist, and as THE MURDER NOTEBOOK begins, he is tasked with attempting to recreate the face of an arson victim. He is quickly shifted to another task, however, as he is called upon to sketch the face of a suspect being sought in connection with a particularly brutal and apparently random murder. When another such killing occurs, followed by a spectacular suicide, Rodriguez senses a nexus among all of the deaths, even though he cannot identify it.

Terri Russo, Rodriguez's paramour and fellow police officer, is heading up the team to which Rodriguez is assigned. While she is behind his intuitive curve, she remains --- how shall I put this? --- skeptically open-minded about his hunches, slow to come around but willing to go with the flow at full throttle once she is convinced. The investigation and the sudden mysterious involvement of federal law enforcement put a strain on their relationship, even as it appears that Rodriguez himself is being targeted by whoever is ultimately behind the mayhem occurring on the streets of New York.

As the investigation resumes, Rodriguez has been continuing the facial reconstruction to which he was originally assigned on his own time at his own expense, little knowing that his work is the first step in resolving one of the major conflicts of his life. Yet both investigations pale when compared to what ultimately awaits Rodriguez, and the reader, at the conclusion of THE MURDER NOTEBOOK.

Santlofer's writing and plotting abilities have improved since ANATOMY OF FEAR --- a great read in its own right --- and are nicely counterpointed in THE MURDER NOTEBOOK by his artwork, which again advances the story and narrative. His sketches are stark and deceptively simple (no four-color plates here), but they are infused with a haunting realism that attracts the reader's attention and interest, even while they occasionally make one's skin quietly crawl. Upon completion of the book, I found myself going back and looking at the drawings more than once, particularly the author's renderings of the stages of Rodriguez's facial reconstruction models.

I would recommend that those students I mentioned --- and everyone else --- make room in their backpacks for THE MURDER NOTEBOOK.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub