Thief of Souls

A falling-out with a superior in Harbin City, China, results in Insp. Lu Fei, the hero of Klingborg’s middling debut and series launch, getting transferred to the quiet township of Raven Valley, where he serves as the deputy chief of police. Lu’s job demands little of him, until the body of 23-year-old Yang Fenfang, who worked in a Harbin bar and was living with her dying mother in Raven Valley, is found in her mother’s house “hollowed out like a birchbark canoe.” Yang’s ex-boyfriend, a slow-witted butcher who flees the police interrogation, becomes the prime suspect, despite Lu’s reservations. Those doubts are vindicated when he learns of two unsolved murders with the same m.o. Passages explaining how recent Chinese history, including the Cultural Revolution, have affected Lu’s family compensate only in part for an underdeveloped lead and the superficial presentation of the country’s politics and tensions. This by-the-numbers thriller falls short of the standard set by such other serial murderer novels set in repressive regimes as Harald Gilbers’s Germania: A Novel of Nazi Berlin. A confident style suggests Klingborg can do better. Agent: Bob Diforio, D4EO Literary. (May)