In Moore's second gruesome outing for NYPD homicide detective James Sakura (after 2003's A Cruel Season for Dying
), a serial killer is preying on young Manhattan women. He suffocates them, surgically rearranges their internal organs to form a kind of mirror image, then dumps their bodies in the trash. But as Sakura, partner Michael Darius and forensic psychiatrist Wilhelmina French try to untangle the meaning of this ritualistic violence, the killer shifts gears, murdering Darius's ex-wife and kidnapping their twin toddlers. Readers looking for a motive for the killer's psychopathology may be disappointed, as throughout the novel he remains an unfathomable monster. Both detectives are interesting, especially Sakura with his Zen-like detachment and dogged determination. Another clever conceit is his Japanese wife Hanae—blind but gifted with a kind of New Age vision—but she functions too much as part of Sakura's backstory (she played a larger role in A Cruel Season for Dying
). The other characters are essentially stock—the acerbic coroner, the ambitious TV crime reporter, a few potential suspects. The pieces of the genre puzzle are all here, but the whole is less than the sum of the parts. Agent, Mel Berger at William Morris. (July 27)
