From Publishers Weekly
Although it gets off to an uncertain start, this first mystery boasts an appealing female detective and a few good shocks delivered close to the end. Three children's bodies are found near a reclusive community of eccentrics not too many miles from San Francisco. Young cop Casey Martinelli and her embittered, tyrannical partner Alonzo Hawkins think they've identified the perfect suspect in Vaun Adams, the community's resident artist, who once was convicted of murdering a child and who is secretive even by the standards of her weird neighbors. Adams is a strong, enigmatic creation: haunted, gothic and broadly dysfunctional, with a dark past that may contain the lurking killer. But the plot exhibits cracks--a tenuous piece of deduction conveniently dictates that the murder suspects can come only from the community--and King stumbles several times in developing her detectives' characters. She is coy about revealing the gender of Casey's lover (most readers will spot the "surprise" a mile off), and she lets Hawkins' initially gruff manner dissipate within a dozen pages. If King plans a series, she will need to flesh out her protagonists. Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
An omniscient narrator endows this amazing first novel with intelligence, intrigue, and intricacy. The serial murders of three kindergarten-aged girls test the uncomfortable relationship between a crusty San Francisco detective and his new female partner, both known for their independence. Eventually, unforeseen complications involving a remarkable artist's past and an evil stalker's secretive present force the pair into confrontation, and they learn to trust. This work exhibits strong psychological undertones, compelling urgency, and dramatic action. A necessary purchase and a writer to watch.Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Book Description
This gripping debut of the Kate Martinelli mystery series won the Edgar Award for Best First Mystery, generating wide critical acclaim and moving Laurie R. King into the upper tier of the genre. As A Grave Talent begins, the unthinkable has happened in a small community outside of San Francisco. A string of shocking murders has occurred, each victim an innocent child. For Detective Kate Martinelli, just promoted to Homicide and paired with a seasoned cop who's less than thrilled to be handed a green partner, it's going to be a difficult case. Then the detectives receive what appears to be a case-breaking lead: it seems that one of the residents of this odd, close-knit colony is Vaun Adams, arguably the century's greatest painter of women, a man, as it turns out, with a sinister secret. For behind the brushes and canvases also stands a notorious felon once convicted of strangling a little girl. What really happened on that day of savage violence eighteen years ago? To bring a murderer to justice, Kate must delve into the artist's dark past--even if she knows it means losing everything she holds dear.
The publisher, Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.
Seventeen years ago, a jury found Vaun Adams guilty of strangling a six-year-old girl, and sent Vaun to prison. One year ago, an international panel of art critics judged her the century's greatest woman painter. Now children are dying again in the community of eccentrics where the notorious artist has taken shelter. Katarina Cecilia Martinelli (Casey to her friends, Kate to her few intimates), newly of the SFPD, and Alonzo Hawkin, in charge of the investigation, are charged with finding the truth: Is Vaun a murderess? Or is she the perfect victim?
From the Inside Flap
This gripping debut of the Kate Martinelli mystery series won the Edgar Award for Best First Mystery, generating wide critical acclaim and moving Laurie R. King into the upper tier of the genre. As A Grave Talent begins, the unthinkable has happened in a small community outside of San Francisco. A string of shocking murders has occurred, each victim an innocent child. For Detective Kate Martinelli, just promoted to Homicide and paired with a seasoned cop who's less than thrilled to be handed a green partner, it's going to be a difficult case. Then the detectives receive what appears to be a case-breaking lead: it seems that one of the residents of this odd, close-knit colony is Vaun Adams, arguably the century's greatest painter of women, a man, as it turns out, with a sinister secret. For behind the brushes and canvases also stands a notorious felon once convicted of strangling a little girl. What really happened on that day of savage violence eighteen years ago? To bring a murderer to justice, Kate must delve into the artist's dark past--even if she knows it means losing everything she holds dear.
A Grave Talent (A Kate Martinelli Mystery) ANNOTATION
Kate Marinelli, newly promoted to Homicide in the San Francisco police department, has been assigned with her new partner, middle-aged Alonzo Hawkin, to the murders of three little girls in the area. They gradually uncover a pattern of evil so bizarre that Casey's carefully guarded private life is demolished.
FROM THE PUBLISHER
This gripping debut of the Kate Martinelli mystery series won the Edgar Award for Best First Mystery, generating wide critical acclaim and moving Laurie R. King into the upper tier of the genre. As A Grave Talent begins, the unthinkable has happened in a small community outside of San Francisco. A string of shocking murders has occurred, each victim an innocent child. For Detective Kate Martinelli, just promoted to Homicide and paired with a seasoned cop who's less than thrilled to be handed a green partner, it's going to be a difficult case. Then the detectives receive what appears to be a case-breaking lead: it seems that one of the residents of this odd, close-knit colony is Vaun Adams, arguably the century's greatest painter of women, a man, as it turns out, with a sinister secret. For behind the brushes and canvases also stands a notorious felon once convicted of strangling a little girl. What really happened on that day of savage violence eighteen years ago? To bring a murderer to justice, Kate must delve into the artist's dark past—even if she knows it means losing everything she holds dear.
FROM THE CRITICS
BookList - Marie Kuda
Inspector Alonzo Hawkin is assigned to coordinate investigations into the strangulation deaths of two Bay Area little girls and the disappearance of another, the daughter of a politically connected family. He is told to take Kate Martinelli as his assistant for PR reasons (it'll look good to the fearful mothers of four counties to have a woman on the case), and indeed, Martinelli is paraded before the press when the third child's body is found dumped, as were the others, in Tyler's Road, where lives a colony of artists and dropouts, each of them fairly isolated from the others. It is almost certain that the child-killer is a resident of the colony, and suspicion falls on a haunting artist with a murder conviction in her past. Well crafted, prickling with excitement, full of intriguing characters, King's debut doesn't disclose that her female detective is lesbian until 180 pages have gone by. After the last 120, readers won't care, for with Kate Martinelli the figure of the lesbian sleuth explodes into the mystery mainstream in a story told well enough to hook and hold Rendell and P. D. James fans.
Art & Photography
Book Info
