While Millar’s second gritty crime novel featuring Belfast PI Karl Kane (after Bloodstorm
) doesn’t have the same punch as its predecessor, readers with an appetite for gore will be engrossed. Soon after Kane agrees to look into the case of an alleged runaway, Martina Ferris, a friendly pathologist tips off Kane that he’s examining two corpses whose profiles match Martina’s and whose liver and kidneys have been removed. If that barbarity isn’t enough, the victims’ bodies carried too much weight for their skeletons, suggesting that they were force fed. Once a chief suspect emerges—Bobby Hannah, son of a renowned surgeon, who shot his mother to death, allegedly by accident—Kane and Hannah engage in a cat-and-mouse game that strikes increasingly close to home for the detective. While it’s hard to come up with much new in a serial killer plot, Millar distinguishes himself from many of his contemporaries in the genre with taut writing and a memorable lead character. (Jan.)
