Waites’s brilliant fourth Joe Donovan thriller (after White Riot
) puts him in the same league as such established contemporary noir masters as Ian Rankin, John Harvey, and Denise Mina. When Mae Blacklock was 11, she strangled a boy to death in a fit of rage. The story, which made for lurid tabloid fodder, became a common reference point in Britain for juvenile homicide. Forty years later, Mae, now Anne Marie Smeaton, asks Newcastle PI and former journalist Joe Donovan to work with her on a tell-all memoir. Waites alternates between Anne Marie’s interview sessions and an increasingly bizarre series of crimes, in which first one and then two children in nearby communities are murdered. Donovan’s investigative team gradually uncovers a pattern of child killings over the years that appears to follow Smeaton’s frequent moves. Donovan’s continued search for his son, who disappeared six years earlier, at age six, raises the emotional stakes in this searing crime novel. (June)
