William Bayer's new crime novel, "City Of Knives," set in Buenos Aires, is now available in a French language edition.

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William Bayer’s 1982 Edgar winning (“Best Novel”) thriller, “Peregrine,” is now available in a new reprint edition with a special introduction by Otto Penzler.

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The French edition of William Bayer's "The Dream Of The Broken Horses" has just been awarded the 2005 Prix Mystere de la Critique for best foreign crime novel.

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New York Times bestselling author William Bayer, described by Robert B. Parker as "a first-rate master of heart-pounding suspense," returns with this breathtaking, multilayered new tale of a twenty-five year old society murder and the many long shadows it still casts.

A man and a woman are making love....

One hot summer afternoon a quarter century ago, a wealthy socialite and her young lover, a private school teacher, were gunned down in a cheap hotel room on the outskirts of the Midwestern city of Calista. Now, forensic sketch artist David Weiss has returned to his hometown to cover a routine celebrity murder trial for ABC. For someone who has earned a reputation for cracking high-profile cases with his portraits of suspects based on eyewtiness accounts, chruning out courtroom sketches is merely pedestrian work. But Calista holds other attractions for David. First, there are the welcome attentions of CNN reporter Pam Wells. Then there's the notoriously unsolved double murder at the Flamingo Court motel that has haunted him since boyhood.

Like his psychoanalyst father before him, David becomes obsessed with one of the Flamingo victims, Barbara Fulraine -- who was as fascinating as she was enigmatic -- and with the bizarre circle of friends, gangsters, columnists, and lovers who surrounded her. David's father believed that if he could unlock Barbara's troubling, recurring nightmare -- which she called "the dream of the broken horses" -- his solution would mark a watershed in his career. Now David, armed with old news clippings and police interviews, as well as an extraordinary psychological case study of Mrs. Fulraine recently discovered among his deceased father's effects, seeks to use his highly honed professional skills to reassemble the face of her killer. But with each eyewitness interview and each fresh stroke of his pencil, David finds himself being hurled down a path of ever-darkening mystery, obsession and dread.

One of our most elegant and commanding writers of psycho-erotic suspense, William Bayer has crafted a riveting, sharp-edged psychological thriller, perhaps his finest, most compelling work to date.

Advance comment on The Dream Of The Broken Horses has been highly favorable:

"The investigation into a 25-year-old double murder of a wealthy socialite and her yoiung lover is renewed with vigor in this sharp and sexy thriller from Edgar-winning author William Bayer. Compelling psycho-erotic suspense...." Publisher's Weekly

"Edgar winner Bayer writes a psycho-erotic thriller, that, in a detective's yearning for a glamorous beauty murdered when he was only a boy, conjures up the classic film Laura. Bayer, whose previous novels starred NYPD detective Frank Janek, makes a startling yet satisfying departure. Richly atmospheric...." Booklist (starred, boxed review)

"Bayer returns from his pseudonymous sabbatical as David Hunt (The Magician's Tale, etc.) to spin a dizzyingly complex tale of a long-unsolved felony. Bayer (Mirror Maze etc.) turns the case into something ambitious, penetrating...." Kirkus Reviews

"The Dream Of The Broken Horses is a hypnotic blend of suspense, mystery and revelation. Erotically charged and poetically rendered, it worked its way straight into my own dreams. It's great to read a smart, sexy thriller and this is one I recommend."
-- T. Jefferson Parker (author of Silent Joe and Laguna Heat)

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Q & A With William Bayer
Re: The Dream Of The Broken Horses

Q. How did you come to write "The Dream Of The Broken Horses"?

A. I'd been thinking about this story for a long time, at least fifteen years. My starting point was always a Parents Day meeting at a posh private country day school for boys between an impoverished teacher and the wealthy mother of one of his students. They would have an affair, then be murdered together in a shabby motel room across the street from a honky-tonk amusement park. It took me a long time to find a way of framing that material. When finally I set my mind to it, the novel quickly came together.

Q. Is Calista, the imaginary mid-western urban setting in your novel, really Cleveland? We know that's where you were brought up and that you attended a private day school there.

A. There're certainly elements of Cleveland in Calista, and elements of my old school in the fictional school in the book. But I made a decision early on not to get locked into a real place. I didn't want to restrict myself to the literal details of Cleveland, and to receive letters after publication that I had a street name wrong or the street didn't really run in such-and-such a direction. This decision was liberating in that it freed me to fictionalize far more than just a few details. It allowed me to create something entirely new that didn't exist. I made Calista into a river town, much like Cincinnati or Pittsburgh, when in fact, Cleveland is very much a city of the Great Lakes. I was also able to turn the school into rather a nasty place, while the school I attended was actually quite fine. But I won't deny that there're a lot of very personal things in the book.

Q. Can you give us an example?

A. Barbara Fulraine's diary would be one. As a kid I was quite a snoop -- maybe that's why I specialize in writing mysteries. Anyway, one day when I was around twelve I was snooping around in my mother's private papers, and I came across a pocket notebook secured with a rubberband. >From the way it was hidden away, I understood that it was important to her. Of course I tried to read it. It turned out to be the diary she'd kept during her psychoanalysis. The names of people were coded and much of the material was pretty intimate. The diary was so painful to read, I put it back where I found it. I tried to get through it a couple more times over the years, but couldn't. Then one day, when I was home from college, I looked for it again and it was gone. I've always wondered what all her cryptic entries were about...and that came to be the origin of Barbara Fulraine's totally fictional psychoanalytic diary that appears in the book.

Q. What about the unfinished psychoanalytic case study by Barbara's shrink, also in the book?

A. That's pure fiction, but the methodology I followed was Freud's. The shrink character, the father of the protagonist and narrator, David Weiss, becomes pathologically involved with Barbara, his patient. He tries to write up her case in the classic manner as exemplified by Freud in his famous "The Case Of The Wolf Man." But he becomes lost in the maze of her case, and his craziness in regard to her shows in his footnotes. By the way, I've always been intrigued by the kind of character I think of as "the troubled shrink" and by the psychopathology that often creeps into psychotherapist-patient relationships.

Q. David Weiss, your protagonist, is a very well-known forensic artist presently slumming in Calista as a courtroom sketch artist at a celebrity trial. But he doesn't care about the trial at all. Rather he's obsessed with the twenty-six year old double murder of his old French teacher and Barbara Fulraine, the mother of one of his classmates with whom he never got along. Later it turns out his father, a suicide, was Barbara's troubled shrink. So in a sense isn't he trying to complete his father's unfinished case?

A. That's exactly what he's trying to do, but in a totally different way. His dad wanted to decode Barbara's recurring erotic nightmare, which she called "the dream of the broken horses." David, on the other hand, wants to find out who killed the lovers and why, and, as a forensic artist, he has the skills with which to do that. He takes the courtroom job as an excuse to return to his hometown, Calista, and then spends most of his time delving into the old unsolved case. This was the structure I spent so many years trying to develop. As mentioned, once I had that figured out, the novel practically wrote itself.

Q. You give the impression that the book is very personal to you in many ways.

A. I think that's true. But it's important for me to distinguish between real events in my own life and the stories I tell in my fiction. The job of fiction writer, seems to me, is to draw upon real emotions while depicting fictitious events.

Q. Which raises a question -- why do you write murder stories?

A. I really can't think of anything more appropriate for me to do as a writer. Crime stories, it seems to me, perfectly fit the times, not just because we live in a fairly murderous era, but because these kinds of stories often tell us important truths about ourselves. Crime stories, by their very nature, are complete, constructed as they are of beginnings, middles and ends. For that reason I think they not only entertain, but, by imposing order upon chaotic events, they can also help us make some sense out of our chaotic times and lives.

The following excerpt is from an early chapter of The Dream Of The Broken Horses, to be published by PocketBooks in February, 2002. David Weiss, a free-lance forensic and courtroom sketch artist, has returned to his home town, the mid-western city, Calista, to cover a celebrity murder trial for CNN. But soon it becomes clear that his real interest is in a double society murder that took place when he was a boy, twenty- five years before. The reason behind David's obsessive interest in this old case is not revealed until the end of the book. In this brief excerpt, David returns to the shabby motel room where the old killing took place. While sketching the scene, he falls into a kind of reverie:

A man and a woman are making love . . .
    Afterwards they cling to one another, unwilling to break the seal of sweat between their bodies. They close their eyes, doze off. The sky outside quickly darkens. Then a sudden summer shower. A bolt of lightning followed by a crack of thunder jars them from their reverie.
     "That was close. Sounded like it hit the Lake," the man says.
     The woman's nervous. "It's getting dangerous now," she whispers. "I know he suspects. He's violent too. He doesn't show it. You'd never guess it from meeting him. Sometimes I see it in his eyes, something terrible. At first I liked that about him. It made him interesting. My husband was just the opposite." She tightens her lips to show her contempt. "He never did anything, never felt anything. Even after the kidnapping all he could do was stare off into space. But Cody's so...alive. You can feel the energy coming off him. And there's that violent streak that's so...you know, dangerous. I'm really afraid now of what he'll do when he finds out. And he will find out. I'm sure of it. Soon. Very soon, I think."
     The man nods slowly as she speaks. He's heard this kind of talk before, doesn't know what to make of it. The woman lying beside him, this woman whom he loves -- she's wealthy, divorced, free, can do whatever she wants, see anyone she likes. And if she's recently been involved with some kind of gangster, then, it seems to him, all she has to do is cut it off. No one owns her. She's not the sort who allows herself to be owned. He doesn't understand all this talk about "what he'll do when he finds out." But she seems to like talking about it. The "danger" she speaks of -- it seems to make her hot.
     Feeling her heat now, he kisses her, strokes her thighs, whispers: "Yes, I know...it's getting dangerous."
     She responds with soft moans of pleasure.
    Again they make love, this time more slowly than before. It's usually like this -- a first, quick, harsh bout as soon as they enter the room and shut the door, all writhing bodies, thrusting bellies and thrashing limbs, followed soon after by a second round, delicious for being so excruciatingly slow, with her on top the way she likes, and him quivering beneath, responding to her every subtle move.
     They carry on like this for a long while. He loses track of time. The rain stops. The sky brightens. The strong afternoon light, entering the room through the blinds, coats their bare bodies with stripes.
     "Look! We're zebras!" he says, pointing at their image in the mirror.
     She smiles.
    "Love-making zebras," she whispers. "How'd you like being humped by a zebra?" She touches one of the stripes on his neck. "Or would you rather be taken by a lioness?" She makes a cat-like sound, then rakes her nails across his chest. "Crocodile?" She snaps her jaws. "I'll eat you alive." She laughs. "Eagle?" She leans forward, snaps her teeth. "I'll eat your heart out you're not sweet to me." She wags her tongue. "Or a slurpy puppy? You'd like that, wouldn't you? I know you would. I know how much you like being licked...."
     He revels in her antics. He can't believe that this is happening to him, that he's with this extraordinary woman, that they meet like this, make love like this, that she, with her beauty and wealth and social position, seems truly to love him despite the fact he's just a schoolmaster, new in town and virtually penniless. And she does seem to love him. He's certain she does. And still he can't believe it.
    "I want to screw till our bodies give out," she whispers. "Our brains too. Our hearts. Our lungs." She bends to lie down upon him, then whispers directly into his ear. "I love it that we meet here. This slovenly place. I love this room, so anonymous. Just think of all the couples who've shagged themselves to heaven in here. I love leaving here reeking of you, coated with your sweat. That's why I don't shower afterwards anymore. I like driving off in my Jag with the smell of you on me. Then back home stripping off my clothes, sniffing my underwear with your cum on it before I shower. Then maybe going off to a cocktail party or a dinner, still feeling you inside me, where my friends ask me what I'm up to these days, why the glow upon my face, why I no longer spend my afternoons playing tennis at the club. Then back home, lying in bed, thinking of you again as I fall off to sleep. Your hands on my flanks. My head in your crotch and your's in mine. Licking you. Tasting you. Feeling you grow hard and throb and come inside my mouth...."
     Just hearing her whisper dirty to him like this as she gently pumps herself against him, sends him into a world brilliant with desire. He's on the edge of climax. He can barely restrain himself...and yet he does. For this is their game, each teasing, testing the other, trying to tempt the other to come first, each seeing how long he or she can hold out before the explosion that brings sweet release.
    They stop moving, become still, close their eyes, then begin to move again, this time even more tormentingly slow. Together they enter a state of heightened bliss wherein even the slightest movement sends powerful currents of yearning to their nerve ends. Waves of longing. Cascades of wanting. Rainbows of desire and lust.
    Suddenly the door is thrust open. A cone of blinding light slashes across the room. They turn together, see a dark figure dressed in a black coat and black fedora silhouetted in the doorway against the powerful blast of the summer sun.
     A moment of utter stillness as the three of them freeze -- man and woman naked together on the bed, the poised figure in the doorway devouring the couple with his eyes.
     Time is compressed. The moment is prolonged. The woman, feeling danger, recoils. The man grasps hold of her in an effort to protect. The figure in the doorway, empowered by their fear, raises something dark and long from beneath his coat. Then the double denotation, the explosions as two quick loud reports fill the room, then two more. The walls recoil slightly at the shock as the lovers, their faultless young flesh suddenly penetrated by hundreds of tiny metal balls, are hurled back against the headboards of the bed.
     Their bodies spasm without control. Dark ruby-red blood sprays like geysers from their wounds.
     The echo fades. The lovers, bodies tangled, cease writhing and lie still. The figure in the doorway lowers his gun, sniffs at the room which smells now of gunpowder, bowels and blood. His eyes take in what he has wrought. For a moment they feast upon the carnage, illuminated as if by a spotlight by the rays of sunlight that break through the door. There is, he recognizes, a terrible beauty before him, the beauty of young bodies freshly torn by death. After a moment he pulls his hat down to the level of his eyes, gathers his dark coat about his frame, turns and disappears.

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