Frozen

In Ashford's uneven debut, the first of a series, the police call in Megan Rhys, a Birmingham, England, forensic psychologist, after the discovery of a murdered prostitute leads a detective superintendent to suspect that one of his own men has gone bad. As Megan begins to assemble the clues she needs to construct an accurate profile of what appears to be a serial killer, she gets a plea for help from a female newscaster who has been receiving threatening and obscene messages. Few readers will be surprised when the two inquiries converge, while some may feel the choice to share the killer's suspicious thoughts with the reader halfway through gives too much away. Hopefully, Ashford, a former BBC journalist and the first woman to graduate from Queens' College Cambridge with a criminology master's degree, will use her impressive background more effectively in her next Megan Rhys novel. (Aug.)