Personal Effects/Dark Art

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I can't see you, Mr. Taylor, but I already know you. I smelled the stink of fear when you opened that door ...

You want to save the blind man? Get inside his head like he's gotten into yours? Then fucking EARN it.

The second book in the Personal Effects series.

Zach Taylor is assigned to the blind Serial Killer suspect Martin Grace in order to determine if he is fit to stand trial. Grace is implicated in 12 brutal murders, many of which he described to the victims in detail days beforehand. Grace says that he simply 'saw' the deaths before hand and that they were really carried out the 'dark man' stalking him. The murders ceased after the onset of his psychosomatic blindness.

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Tropes used in Personal Effects/Dark Art include:

• Cassandra Truth
• Cold-Blooded Torture
• The Commissioner Gordon (Zach's boss regularly runs interference for him in the book)
• Continuity Nod (The novel starts with people congratulating Zach for events in the previous book)
• Danger Takes a Backseat
• Evil Phone (Inverted, since the call from the dead Sophronia Poole actually helps Zach)
• Hannibal Lecture (Grace and Zach's first meeting)
• Through the Eyes of Madness
• Imaginary Enemy
• Kill the Cutie ( {{spoiler|Emilio. After the Nice Job Breaking It, Hero moment, Emilio starts freaking out and proceeds to headbutt the wall until his skull caves in. That's when Zach starts to clue into the fact that the 'Dark Man' is a Not-So-Harmless Villain)
• Mysterious Past (As Zach and friends try to find out more about Grace, they find out that his background is faked.)
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero (When Zach finally manages to get a breakthrough with Grace by showing him how he might be innocent, Grace is at first euphoric, then starts freaking out because the Dark Man's here, and he's showing him how Zach and everyone he loves are Marked to Die for being nice to Grace. Then Emilio the orderly comes in and also gets cursed, causing the Kill the Cutie moment)
• Nightmare Sequence
• Posthumous Character
• Room Full of Crazy
• Stuffed Into the Fridge ( Zach's flashback to his mom's death, all the murder cases that actually get described, even Zach's dream of his girlfriend's death. There is one graphic male death, but it was self inflicted and not nearly as squicky as most of the female deaths. Being female seems to greatly increase your chances of being gorily murdered in this book)
• Things That Go Bump in the Night
• Unreliable Narrator