Blood Cries: A John Jordan Mystery

Lister’s excellent sequel to 2015’s Innocent Blood, the 10th entry in his John Jordan series, couples a crafty whodunit with a thoughtful look at his lead’s inner life. In 1986, 18-year-old John is a student at a ministerial college in Atlanta, where his nondoctrinaire approach to faith separates him from his classmates. The traumatic events of Innocent Blood still weigh heavily on him, and some consider him culpable for the death of a cop and a young child. Meanwhile, John remains obsessed with the Atlanta Child Murders, which he believes are unresolved despite the conviction of Wayne Williams, a man he had a creepy encounter with six years earlier. The theology student is convinced that the number of victims was much larger than was acknowledged by the official, botched, police investigation, and he focuses on detecting a pattern in the disappearance of several children whose bodies were never found. John ultimately gets some surprising answers about the crimes. [em]Agent: Amy Moore-Benson, AMB Literary Management. (May) [/em]