The Gravedigger’s Song

British author Waites’s overwrought third outing for ex-undercover cop Tom Killgannon (after 2019’s The Sinner) finds Tom still living in witness protection in Cornwall. When his liaison officer asks Tom to provide a temporary home for 17-year-old Simon West, the only survivor of an attack on Simon’s family by a gang of goons, Tom reluctantly agrees to let the teen stay at his cottage. Soon someone breaks into the cottage, and the violence escalates from there. The complicated plot unfolds through the perspectives of multiple characters, including Sullivan, a disaffected member of the gang, and Simon, who gets caught up in the racist politicking of Aiden Marx, a conservative activist, and Arthur King, a nativist candidate for MP representing the impoverished area of Falmouth where Simon’s family was murdered. Waites’s take on contemporary white nationalism engages, but its damaging effects are undercut by his combining serious social commentary with the bizarre for bizarre’s sake. This macabre story searching for heart is unlikely to win the author new fans. Agent: Jane Gregory, David Higham Assoc. (U.K.). (Aug.)