Bone Black

A forensic artist investigating the murder of her friend must go deep into the insular birdwatching community in this stylish, gruesomely thrilling series debut.

As a forensic artist for the NYPD, Cassie Stefanidis must rely on the memories of others to capture her subjects. At her best, she can draw only flawed doubles—like fraternal twins of the perpetrators, or their spirit photographs. When the body of her friend, Ginny Haberman, is discovered on a wet spit of sand in Jamaica Bay, however, Cassie has a feeling that she herself has seen the killer. Signs suggest that the murderer knew the victim, but poor Ginny barely knew anyone—even within the rather insular, and decidedly eccentric, Manhattan birdwatching community that meant the world to her.

Using nothing but her wits—and with the grudging help of her volatile ex-husband, Homicide Detective Del Gutierrez—Cassie feels driven to track down the killer, a life-or-death chase that leads her into the darkness of the past and, ultimately, to the other side of the mirror.

Calling forth Thomas Harris’s indelible Clarice Starling and the gruesome horror-crime novels of John Connolly, Bone Black renders 1980s New York City in scorched inks and unremitting danger as one out-of-place woman’s obsession for the truth may be her first, and last, calling.