Carr's first novel was a surprise best - seller when it was published in 1994, but savvy trendspotters should have recognized all the ingredients that sometimes launch a literary thriller into the limelight: a mainstream crime - fiction plot (cops and shrinks
track psycho killer) overlayed with some vivid history (late - nineteenth - century New York), and a famous hero (Teddy Roosevelt as the city's police chief).
His first screenplay was for the little - seen 1995 Kelly LeBrock thriller,
Tracks of a
Killer, which, like Identity, features a trip to an isolated place (here a chalet) where a crazed
psycho runs rampant.