October 2024 Magazine

Get the Picture is a delicious romp through the New York City Contemporary Art World. Bianca Bosker draws in the reader from the onset with her tone that is equal parts confidential and confessional. From small time gallery owners and rising artists to outrageous performance artists and madcap collectors, she consorts with anyone who will reveal the answer to an age-old question: What is Art?

Cincinnati homicide detective Will Borders is a wounded hero living out every day as though it might be his last. He leaves no stone unturned in his pursuit of a bald-headed villain who has a penchant for sharp knives that are used to slice women from the inside out. The author paints us a craggy picture of Will Borders—as a man in recovery from a spinal tumor that has left him partially crippled. His shuffling gait and reliance on a cane is a sharp reminder that the deadly tumor would have killed a less resilient man. Sacked from being a detective and relegated to a desk job as the P.R. spokesperson for the police force, Borders is intent on nabbing the bald-headed villain.

In June 2022, I found myself perched precariously on the second-story roof of an abandoned house in the far east of Ukraine, listening to Russian mortar rounds impact closer and closer. As I risked a broken neck or worse trying to get mobile service, I caught myself laughing at the surreal, impossible nature of where I was. I could be back in Seattle with my beautiful wife, working at my comfortable IT job, building my even more comfortable future. Instead, here I was, 10 meters up in the air in far northeastern Ukraine...