GENIUS, THE by Jesse Kellerman - SIGNED FIRST EDITION BOOK
See all titles by Jesse Kellerman.
April 2008 NY: Penguin. First edition, first printing, mint, new/unread in a flawless dustjacket, signed by the author.
Greed gets Ethan Muller, a 33-year-old Manhattan art dealer, into hot water in Kellerman's superb third stand-alone thriller (after Trouble).
When reclusive artist Victor Cracke disappears, Muller winds up taking possession of the boxes and boxes of intense, disturbing drawings that Cracke left behind in his shabby Queens apartment. A favorable New York Times article helps fuel lucrative sales at an exhibit of Cracke's drawings at Muller's Chelsea gallery.
Soon, though, Muller starts to receive cryptic, vaguely threatening letters. He also hears from a retired NYPD detective, Lee McGrath, who recognizes the face of one of the boys in a Cracke drawing as belonging to the victim of a 40-year-old unsolved murder.
That revelation turns Muller into an amateur detective as he attempts to discover how the dead boy's image-along with those of several other victims-made its way into the pictures.