A Dark, Divided Self

The discovery of human remains outside the city of Manchester that match the DNA of 21-year-old Amy Peters, a university student who vanished three years earlier, drives British author Cross’s disappointing third mystery featuring criminologist Will Traynor (after 2021’s Devil in the Detail). The disappearances of Peters and four other female students led their colleagues to organize take-back-the-night marches and the media to dub their abductor the Phantom. With the Manchester police having made no progress, Det. Chief Insp. Bernard Watts taps Traynor, who often assists the Birmingham police, to help his team crack the case, a daunting task complicated when a key piece of evidence—masking tape that may have been used to gag Peters and may have genetic material from the Phantom—goes missing from the police evidence room. Cross offers neither genuine suspense nor innovation, and the superficial exploration of the murderer’s psyche could have been concocted by an author without Cross’s credentials as a forensic psychologist. Others have done a better job of handling this well-traversed terrain. Agent: Jade Kavanagh, Darley Anderson Literary (U.K.). (Feb.)