Thirteen proves to be a lucky number for British author McGown, as the 13th outing for her detective chief inspectors, Lloyd and Hill, amply justifies her selection by the London Times
as one of last century's Masters of Crime. Her engaging husband-wife team find themselves matched with an extremely cunning serial killer. The bludgeoning of a bingo winner seems to be a simple mugging gone bad, until the police discover that the victim's winnings were left behind, displayed on the corpse in a perverse arrangement that hints at a cryptic deeper significance. Lloyd and Hill are put under additional pressure by the presence at the crime scene of a legendary reporter who had shown up the police two decades earlier by singlehandedly averting a miscarriage of justice through his identification of the real South Coast murderer, a serial slayer. With this entry, which may strike some as an homage to Agatha Christie's classic The ABC Murders
, McGown's series can legitimately be compared to Peter Lovesey's outstanding Peter Diamond novels, blending police procedural and twisty whodunit tropes with sardonic humor and byplay between members of the police force. While she's not yet a household name in U.S. mystery circles, this excellent effort could—and should—change that. Agent, Vanessa Holt (U.K.). (Jan. 25)
