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People Magazine
Kay Farrow is a walking contradiction. Although an inherited condition has rendered her incapable of discerning colors, the young San Franciscan has nonetheless become a successful photographer on the strength of her keen eye. Now her perceptual abilities are about to be tested as she tries to figure out who butchered Tim Lovsey, the gorgeous street hustler who was her subject and friend.
It's not long before Kay's descent into the nether leather world turns treacherous. Those who desperately want to stop her investigation include some of Tim's powerful, deeply closeted clients-not to mention the police, who fear embarrassment from the murder's similarities to a string of earlier unsolved serial killings.
Writing under a pen name, suspense novelist William Bayer mesmerizes with his sleight of hand. But the book's lingering spell lies in the way its heroine's perspective enables us to see, as if for the first time, her beloved city in all its chiaroscuro splendor. - Pam Lambert
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New York Times - Crime Column
A strange, seductive story, told from the surreal perspective of a young woman who literally sees reality in black and white and shades of gray, makes The Magician's Tale as eerie as a midnight walk in the fog. Writing under the pseudonym David Hunt, William Bayer starts the fog machine by introducing us to the bleak world that a San Francisco art photographer named Kay Farrow sees when she looks out from eyes that are completely color-blind. "The spectrum I know, the one of tones light and dark, is to me exquisite," says Kay, whose sensitivity to light adds to her melancholy aura as she wanders the city alone at night, searching among the demimonde for subjects for her disturbing images.
Kay's nocturnal prowls through the Tenderloin district take on a terrible purpose after the bizarre murder of a handsome street hustler who was her favorite model and only friend. The voice of the storyteller grows more intimate, more mesmerizing, once the narrative begins to explore the shadowy secrets in the victim's past. But it is Kay's extraordinary vision that arrests us; with the starkness of a reverse negative, it shows us light and dark, truth and deception, reality and illusion, even good and evil, in ways we never imagined.- Marilyn Stasio |
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