The Killing School

As in Santlofer's two previous crime novels (The Death Artist and Color Blind), his latest to star Kate McKinnon, a former NYPD detective turned art historian, brings the New York art world to sharply detailed life.

A Christian church service is raided by a squad of armed soldiers. The parishioners are forced to lie down on the ground while soldiers forcibly take children from their mothers’ arms. It is 1991 in war-torn southern Sudan. The young prisoners endure weeks of harsh captivity and are given one option—become a child soldier—to survive the one-room prison where scores of young boys slept, lived, and died from dysentery. One night, however, a small band of the children flees.