Most crime novels lunge for spectacle and skip the grind where justice is actually made—chain-of-custody, tiny clues, and the pressure of local power. The Color of Death solves that by showing exactly how a prosecutor must read a body, a town, and a lie when everyone wants the case over, not solved. In The Color of Death, the difference between truth and narrative isn’t a twist—it’s the daily work.
The Color of Death argues that murders are solved not by swagger but by humble attention—one bruised guard mark, one missing page, one frightened witness at a time—and that’s why the hard parts matter most.
Evidence snapshot
- Autopsy specifics are precise and clinical: “The official cause of death is the severing of the carotid artery… [she] had been stabbed nineteen times with a four- to five-inch, single-edged knife… The scissors were impaled… postmortem… shoeprint as a men’s Doc Martens, size twelve.”
- Scene reading becomes philosophy: “What would she tell me if she could? Her body can still testify … those eyes are already turning opaque—The Color of Death.”
- Chain-of-custody is plot, not footnote: “The pages for October 8… are missing… Missing or spoliated evidence tanks cases… Either [gross] negligence… or [tampered] evidence.”
- Moral frame via the “Artist” closing: “This is where you give the powerless a voice… The defendant is no longer in control. You are.”
External grounding:
- 2024 U.S. crime trend context (violent crime down ~4–5% year-over-year; murders down notably) clarifies the gap between fear and fact, a tension the novel leans into.
- Wrongful-conviction research suggests an estimated ~11.6% rate in a defined DNA-eligible sample—why chain-of-custody matters so much in The Color of Death.
- South Carolina recording law: one-party consent, a quietly explosive legal reality for small-town power.
Best for: readers who love legal-procedural texture; fans of Grisham but hungry for the prosecutorial grind; anyone who wants The Color of Death to mean evidence, not gore.
Not for: readers who want wall-to-wall action; folks averse to moral ambiguity; readers who dislike prosecutors as protagonists.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
Title & author info
The Color of Death — Trey Gowdy with Christopher Greyson; Harper Influence (HarperCollins), publication August 26, 2025; hardcover and audio (Blackstone).
A legal thriller rooted in prosecutorial reality (Gowdy’s career) layered with Greyson’s suspense instincts. It also launched the fiction side of Fox News Books/Harper Influence—part of why The Color of Death became ubiquitous in late-2025 book news.
My take: The Color of Death is significant because it treats the justice system as a human system. Its strengths are credibility (autopsy & evidence scenes), ethical candor, and small-town political texture. Its weakness—if any—is that it sometimes privileges procedure over momentum. But when it works, The Color of Death is relentless and humane.
2. Background
Set in South Carolina, The Color of Death unfolds where courthouse hierarchy and neighborhood memory overlap. The one-party-consent rule (S.C. Code §17-30-30) quietly shapes both fear and leverage; recordings can upend reputations in a heartbeat.
At the same time, real-world data is stubbornly non-dramatic: violent crime has been trending down (2024), while media cycles amplify the exceptional. The Color of Death channels that contradiction by making the ordinary—the logbook page, the bruised guard mark—the place where truth actually lives.
Wrongful-conviction studies (NIJ/Urban Institute) estimate about 11.6% potential error in a specific historical sample of serious felonies—a chilling backdrop to the novel’s obsession with chain-of-custody and spoliation.
3. Summary of the Book
The Color of Death opens with terror, not triumph. Lawyer Frank Hastings wakes gagged in a river cabin, menaced by JD and Knox, who force him to watch an old televised trial where Assistant DA Colm Truesdale—nicknamed “The Artist”—delivers that devastating closing: “give the powerless a voice.” The vigilantes sneer, “Artists create. Colm destroys.” (That ambivalence is the book’s moral fuse.)
Cut to the main case. Rachel Simone, a 26-year-old stylist, lies dead in her rural salon. The scene is not just brutal—it’s humiliating. “Why did he step on your face? Why cut your hair?” the narrator-prosecutor Colm Truesdale asks himself as he reads the room. A broken gold clasp glints in a pool of blood; Doc Martens prints track toward the back. “Her body can still testify… those eyes are already turning opaque—the color of death.”
Detective Travis Hendrick (young, image-conscious—“It’s ‘Detective’ in the field”) works the scene while Helen Greer (Rachel’s mother) stands outside, trying to reach Macon, Rachel’s ex and father of her child. It’s the first glimpse of a town where grief is public and gossip instantaneous. On the counter: the appointment book—“Shauna Phillips” circled in red with a heart… the last customer ever.
At the morgue, Dr. Ardell Sharp is clinical and unflinching: 19 stab wounds; carotid severed; scissors inserted postmortem; hair cut before insertion; type A blood on tissues near the back even though Rachel is type B; a men’s Doc Martens size 12 shoeprint. This isn’t gore for gore’s sake; it’s precisely what a prosecutor needs to frame a case that will hold.
Then the ground shifts. Reviewing body-cam footage, Colm spots a gold star on the appointment page that he doesn’t remember seeing. In the evidence cage, he flips through the recovered book: “Shauna Phillips” is there as he recalled, but pages are missing—including October 8—and “no page has a gold star.” He thinks like a trial lawyer: “Missing or spoliated evidence tanks cases… Either [negligence]… or [tampered] evidence.” The town doesn’t just have a killer; it has a credibility problem.
Politics sluice into the vacuum. A prominent judge worries about whether one-party-consent recordings exist and who might have them—exactly the kind of small-law technicality that can end big careers. The sheriff wants things quiet. Meanwhile, Macon’s anger and Helen’s brokenness keep the emotional stakes raw and immediate.
The book intercuts this with the Frank/JD vigilante thread, re-playing Colm’s old case via Trial TV and asking whether beautiful closings actually heal anything. The refrain is uncomfortable: “Artists create. Colm destroys.” The Color of Death keeps asking whether justice is an art, a science, or a decision no one can live with.
In the final stretch (spoiler-sparing here), evidence is threatened, alliances tighten, and The Color of Death insists that what wins a case is rarely what social media remembers. The choice facing Colm is brutal: protect the town’s illusions—or bring the story into full light and let it burn whatever it must.
Setting
Small-town South Carolina—diners, courthouses, salons—where everybody knows your middle name and your past cases. The architecture is plot: evidence rooms (“the cage… wire fencing from floor to ceiling”), a morgue that chills and clarifies, and a salon that doubles as a confidante’s office.
4. Analysis
4.1 Characters (depth & impact)
- Colm Truesdale — A prosecutor running on grief and duty. His eye for The Color of Death details (clasp, guard-bruise, footprint) and his courtroom ethic (“give the powerless a voice”) define both his power and his blind spots.
- Detective Travis Hendrick — Image-conscious, teachable, alternately comic and brave—proof that in The Color of Death, growth is earned in evidence rooms, not shootouts.
- Dr. Ardell Sharp — The conscience of forensics; his diction is calm where the town is loud. The Color of Death relies on his language to anchor reality.
- Helen Greer & Macon — Grief and rage as centrifugal force; they keep The Color of Death honest about what cases do to families.
- JD & Knox — Vigilantism, performance, and pain: their obsession with Colm (“The Artist… Colm destroys”) supplies the book’s meta-trial.
4.2 Writing style & structure
Short chapters; elastic POV; forensic specificity; dialog that never over-explains. The book often plants a single seed per chapter (e.g., gold star vs. missing page) and then trusts readers to connect. That restraint—and the clinical autopsy lexicon—makes The Color of Death feel earned.
4.3 Themes & symbolism
- Bodies testify. “Her body can still testify.” The eyes opaque—the title phrase literal and metaphorical.
- Power’s paperwork. Not just who did it, but who logged it, bagged it, and “lost” it. Chain-of-custody becomes moral weather. (Forensic literature backs this: without clean chains, evidence gets excluded.)
- Justice vs. performance. The Trial TV flashback questions whether eloquence is justice or theater.
4.4 Genre-specific elements & recommendation
As a legal-procedural thriller, The Color of Death leans into world-building through institutions—morgue, evidence cage, courthouse rhythms—alongside realistic dialogue. Recommend it to readers who value verisimilitude, prosecutorial POV, and cases that turn on inches.
5. Evaluation
(1) Strengths
- Procedural credibility. The autopsy scene is textbook: measurements, sequence, causation—why The Color of Death feels trustworthy.
- Moral candor. The book allows sorrow without cynicism.
- Small-town political texture. Quiet pressures feel real, not melodramatic.
(2) Weaknesses
- Pacing dips when the narrative pauses to litigate procedure; some readers will crave more field work.
- Villain psychology (in the vigilante thread) can feel stylized—intentionally operatic.
(3) Impact (personal)
I felt the ache of families living in “pending,” and the steady dignity of people like Ardell who do the cold work so juries can breathe. The Color of Death reminded me that justice is a hundred small promises kept.
(4) Comparison
If you like A Time to Kill and The Lincoln Lawyer, you’ll appreciate The Color of Death—but Gowdy/Grayson spend more time in the morgue and the evidence cage than many of their peers (in a good way).
(5) Reception & criticism
Media framing emphasized Gowdy’s prosecutor past and the imprint’s first-fiction push; interviews spotlighted his “help me catch a killer” angle.
(6) Useful extras
- Keep an eye on interviews around release week; they sometimes drop behind-the-scenes case anecdotes that deepen The Color of Death’s realism.
6. Personal insight with contemporary educational relevance
Why this matters in classrooms and trainings:
- Chain-of-custody literacy. Teach evidence integrity the way The Color of Death shows it. (Medical/legal sources: StatPearls; NIJ’s “Law 101”.)
- Error awareness. Pair this novel with the NIJ/Urban Institute wrongful-conviction studies (~11.6% estimate in a defined sample). Students should see why small lapses balloon.
- Local law nuance. One-party-consent recording rules (South Carolina) affect case strategy—discuss ethics vs. legality.
7. Quotable lines
- “What would she tell me if she could? Her body can still testify… those eyes are already turning opaque—The Color of Death.”
- “The official cause of death is the severing of the carotid artery… stabbed nineteen times… The scissors were impaled… postmortem… Doc Martens, size twelve.”
- “Missing or spoliated evidence tanks cases… Either [negligent]… or [tampered] evidence.”
- “This is where the power changes… you give the powerless a voice.”
8. Conclusion
The Color of Death is a prosecutor’s thriller that trusts readers to value the slow, exacting work that makes justice possible. It’s emotionally honest, procedurally rigorous, and alive to the way small towns bend when power is embarrassed.
I recommend The Color of Death to readers who want realism with their suspense and to students who need a visceral case study in how evidence earns its way into court. If you’ve ever wondered how truth actually survives, The Color of Death is your lab.