FBI independent contractor Jake Cole deciphers the language of murderers by reconstructing three-dimensional crime scene models in his head—a grim gift that has left his nerves frayed and his psyche fragile. When his father, an important American painter, is almost killed in an Alzheimer’s-fueled accident, Jake is forced to come home and confront a past he spent a quarter of a century trying to forget. Once there, a brutal double homicide teaches Jake that even though he has forgotten about the past, it has not yet forgotten about him.

As Jake tries to make sense of his father’s unhinged existence, he discovers thousands of seemingly meaningless canvases stacked in the studio—a bizarre trail of dust-covered breadcrumbs that Jake believes lead to a killer called the Bloodman. All of his work seems to come apart just as another malevolent beast descends on the town—a Category 5 hurricane that is as unstoppable as the murderer. Pinned between the two forces of nature, Jake realizes that old ghosts are on the move.

Bloodman will leave you reeling long after you have finished listening to it.

“A Sixth Sense-like take on Thomas Harris in his prime...Days after racing to the finish, and letting the book rattle around in the unconscious, the story still unsettles me.” —National Post

“Jake Cole has to be one of the most compelling and tormented protagonists in recent crime fiction…Bloodman is a remarkable debut.” —Booklist (starred review)

Amazon.com Review
A Q&A with Robert Pobi

Question: You've said in other interviews that you don't necessarily enjoy focusing on graphic scenes in your writing, yet Bloodman contains some fairly disturbing descriptions. Why did you choose to include them?

Robert Pobi: Bloodman is a story that has a serial killer at its core, so there are going to be some unpleasant things that have to be done. I couldn't have written the book without showing how the characters were affected by what was going on around them. I had to show what they had seen. So we both had to visit a disturbing headspace, the readers and I. The trick was to do it without making it lurid--which, in the end, made it even more jarring.

Q: Tell us about the research involved in creating such an isolated setting and complex characters.

RP: The first time I went to Montauk, I knew I'd end up writing about it. The hurricane idea grew because to this day, you still hear stories about the 1938 Long Island Express, the storm that nearly flattened the island. And I needed a place where a famous artist could live in relative obscurity, so it all came together. In hindsight, I had been collecting research for this book for a long time. Mindhunter, by Mark Olshaker and John Douglas, set the whole thing in motion. And from there I spun off into newspaper archives, interviews, news footage, and biographies. All the things I read helped me nail down my main character, Jake Cole, because they all became part of his lexicon, his day at the office. And I tried to give the hurricane, Dylan, some good chapters. He took a bit of research. The National Hurricane Center was very helpful.

Q: Which other authors or books have influenced your writing?

RP: The novel that made me realize that popular fiction could be smart was The Eiger Sanction by Trevanian. Every author has that one book that he loves; The Eiger Sanction is mine. I keep a copy of it on my desk. The only other obvious one, I guess, would be Thomas Harris's Red Dragon. It's a beautiful novel, and I'd be lying if I didn’t admit that the specter of it was behind me during all the late nights I worked on Bloodman. Seth Morgan’s novel, Homeboy, knocked me out. Morgan had a massive voice. I wish he'd written more. I heard that the first chapter of his second novel is floating around out there. Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea and Islands in the Stream still mesmerize me. I don't know how he did it, I really don't. And if I don't mention The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, I'll regret it.

Q: Have you considered trying your hand at other genres?

RP: I'm working on contractual obligations for different publishers right now, so my roster for the next two years is: psychological thriller, horror story, techno-thriller, detective story. I honestly can't see writing only one kind of book for the rest of my career. I wouldn't know how. Since different countries have different perceptions of Bloodman, I get to flex a lot of different muscles, and I love the freedom. There are too many things I need to try.