In Ellis's run-of-the-mill second procedural to feature North Yorkshire Det. Insp. Joe Plantaganet (after 2009's Seeking the Dead
), Plantagenet, who carries with him the de rigueur tragic backstory (i.e., the loss of his wife in an accident, the murder of his partner), looks into a potentially explosive case—the strangulation of a young woman, eventually identified as Natalie Parkes, whose left big toe was severed postmortem. Beside her corpse was a porcelain doll, mutilated in the same fashion. Incredibly, the police only learn of similar murders in the 1950s committed by a killer nicknamed the Doll Strangler of Singmass Close, who was never apprehended, by reading a true-crime book. A subplot concerning a naïve would-be model who finds herself abducted and forced to care for an ailing elderly woman provides a clumsy link to the police investigation. The solution to Parkes's murder will strike many as coming out of left field. (Jan.)
