Jonathan Santlofer Books in Order – Complete List

Jonathan Santlofer is an artist, as well as a bestselling author known for his Kate McKinnon series, the Nate Rodrigues books, standalone novels, and short stories.. Here are the Jonathan Santlofer books in order for all his works.

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Kate McKinnon Books in Publication Order

1. The Death Artist, 2002
2. Color Blind, 2004
3. The Killing Art, 2005

Nate Rodriguez Books in Publication Order

1. Anatomy of Fear, 2007
2. The Murder Notebook, 2008

Standalone Novels in Order of Publication

• The Last Mona Lisa, 2021
• The Lost Van Gogh, 2024

Short Stories and Anthologies in Order of Publication

• The Dark End Of The Street, 2010
• L.A. Noire: The Collected Stories, 2010
• New Jersey Noir, 2011
• No Rest For The Dead, 2011  (co-authored with David Baldacci, Jeff Abbott, Lori Armstrong, Sandra Brown, Thomas H Cook, Jeff Lindsay, Diana Gabaldon, Tess Gerritsen, Andrew F Gulli, Lamia Gulli, Peter James, J A Jance, Faye Kellerman, Raymond Khoury, John Lescroart, Gayle Lynds, Alexander McCall Smith, Phillip Margolin, Michael Palmer, T Jefferson Parker, Matthew Pearl, Kathy Reichs, Marcus Sakey, Lisa Scottoline, R L Stine, and Marcia Talley)
• Inherit The Dead, 2013
• The Rich And The Dead, 2011 (Mystery Writers of America Presents)
• The Marijuana Chronicles, 2013
• Dark City Lights, 2015
• Silent Night, Deadly Night, 2016
• Alive in Shape and Color: 17 Paintings by Great Artists and the Stories They Inspired, 2017
• It Occurs to Me That I Am America: New Stories and Art, 2018
• Crime Hits Home, 2022 (Mystery Writers of America Series 3)

Non-Fiction Books

• The Widower’s Notebook: A Memoir, 2018

Jonathan Santlofer Biography – About the Author

Jonathan Santlofer was born in 1946 in New York City. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from Boston University in 1967. Next, he attended the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn where he got his Master of Fine Arts degree in 1969.

Besides being a well-established author, Jonathan Santlofer is also a prominent artist. He started exhibiting his paintings for the first time in 1977. The way he also became a writer, however, was the story he mentioned in an essay titled How the Fire That Destroyed My Paintings Turned Me Into a Writer.

In 1990, Santlofer held a retrospective exhibition in a Chicago gallery, where he put on display ten years of his artwork along with six new paintings. However, on the opening night, because a snowstorm, only a few people attended. The next day, when he returned home, from a phone call from his dealer, he discovered that a fire had destroyed the gallery. Watching the building burn on television, he realized that ten years’ worth of his artwork was lost.

After the fire destroyed most of his work, he moved for a while to Rome in Italy where he began learning classical painting and sculpture from the old masters of the Renaissance.

When he returned home from Italy, his art was more complex, which now also included collages of photographic images and objects in his pieces.

During this time he also started becoming interested in writing books. In an interview, he mentioned that what he wrote in his novels was real except for the murders.

On his website are some very beautiful drawings, sketches, paintings, carvings, and prints. His works have been mentioned in the New York Times, Art in America, Artforum, and Arts. They have also been displayed in several public and private collections. Jonathan Santlofer is on the board of Yaddo, which is one of the oldest artist communities in the US. 

Often he mentioned that he is an artist first and an author second. For him, writing books is about expressing what images would otherwise convey. That’s why in his book crime exists. Art is becoming the subject of crime, where crime is his medium of choice.

The first Jonathan Santlofer book was The Death Artist, in which he used many art pieces. The book is about a series of killings in which the murders are staged to resemble classic paintings.

For example, one of the victims is staged to resemble a Pablo Picasso portrait. She had her face slashed. Also, the killer loves sending collages to his next victims as they contain clues about the planned crimes he intends to commit.

Kate McKinnon Rothstein is a retired cop who is now an art historian, and due to her knowledge in both fields is asked to help with solving the crime.

His book The Last Mona Lisa also mixes historical art intrigue with modern-day thrills.

With 5 main books published in his two series, Jonathan Santlofer has also released several short stories that were included in various mystery anthologies, the latest one published in 2022 with the title Crime Hits Home, as book 3 in the Mystery Writers of America series.

In 2018, he published his first (and so far only) non-fiction work titled The Widower’s Notebook: A Memoir, which is a biography where wrote about all that he learned after his wife died. The book is written in a realistic, honest, and often humorous style, giving a real account of surviving and moving on while surrounded by grief and loss.