No woods so dark as these

In Silvis's subpar fourth mystery featuring Pennsylvania state policeman turned PI Ryan DeMarco (after 2019's A Long Way Down), Ryan and his PI girlfriend, Jayme Matson, who's also former state police, help the police investigate a horrific triple murder in the woods. One victim was crucified on a tree, the other two burnt to a crisp. The revelation that they were a pimp and two prostitutes takes Ryan, Jayme, and the police detectives down some seedy paths. The case itself is intriguing, but there's never any sense of why the police need to hire private detectives (or, actually, conscript them, as they can't actually pay), nor why folks who'd left the force would volunteer to work a case for free. A ton of characters and subplots, including a police corruption case, slows the action. Long-winded prose doesn't help ("There was no accounting for something like that, no predicting when or under what configuration of circumstances such a change would happen, but from then until now she had been his lighthouse and safe harbor"). Hopefully, Silvis will do better next time. Agent: Sandy Lu, L. Perkins Agency. (Aug.)

A fourth case soaked in equal parts blood and sadness beckons Ryan DeMarco, former sergeant with the Pennsylvania State Police. Already mourning his dead son, DeMarco, together with his partner and lover, Jayme Matson, wakes up every morning anguished over the miscarriage she suffered in pursuing their last case in A Long Way Down (2019). But he doesn't feel he can turn down his old boss Capt. Kyle Bowen's request for help after a father and his two young sons make a grisly discovery in the woods outside Otter Creek Township: a burned-out car containing two dead women close to the corpse of a naked man pinned to a tree truck with three rods of rebar. It's hard enough just to identify the corpses; it's even harder to get leads on Luthor Reddick, the hush-hush online antiques dealer who looks increasingly like the killer; and it's hardest of all to close the case when at least two of Reddick's associates are perfectly willing to confess to the murders themselves. As Silvis spins a characteristically atmospheric web, DeMarco can hear the footsteps of Daksh Khatri, the confederate who eluded the dragnet that brought down double murderer Connor McBride, as Khatri, who's clearly determined to hurt him and Jayme in the worst way possible, draws closer and closer. Not so much mysterious as fatalistic, with each revelation leading as inevitably as destiny to the next. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.