COLD EYE

by Giles Blunt ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 23, 1989

A nasty, confused first novel about a painter whose artistic infatuation with murder takes a real-life deadly turn. Thirty-four, and scraping a living off his saintly wife, struggling Manhattan painter Nick Hood's so down and out that he's been beginning to doubt the talent that shines through his startling canvases depicting acts of suicide and murder. But just when the darkest cloud gathers--the art critic for the New York Times snubs Nick in a review of a group show that Nick's part of--so does an apparent silver lining reveal itself: at the show's opening, Nick spots And re Bellisle, a hideously deformed dwarf who will change his life. At their next encounter, Bellisle flashes power both wordly (access to Rockefeller Center's Rainbow Room after hours) and otherwordly (he predicts the death of a barroom drunk). Impressed, Nick takes Bellisle up on his offer to ""help""--and before long, Nick's jumping up at Bellisle's calls to witness deaths in the offing--a suicide leap, a brothel slashing--with his canvases of the deaths commanding both big bucks and hot reviews. But, of course, there's a downside; success swells both Nick's head and lust, leading to an affair with a sexy model that wrecks his marriage; a Colombo-ish homicide cop notices how Nick's paintings mirror real deaths; and, eerily, Bellisle grows less ugly, then more beautiful, with each murder. Predictably, Nick's death-obsession ends in his icing his model/mistress. But rather than end Nick's sorry tale on that low note, Blunt drugs it out a few more depressing chapters by depicting Nick on death row, then suffering through execution by lethal injection. Like Nick, Blunt's not without talent, but his subject devolves into mixed-up mayhem. Who's Bellisle, anyway? The devil? Dorian Gray's grandson'? Whomever, he--along with the rest of Blunt's bleak, sour-hearted novel--leaves little more than a very bad taste in the mouth.

Pub Date: June 23, 1989

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Morrow

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1989

Categories: FICTION