The Jigsaw man A novel

In her first thriller, London criminal solicitor Matheson introduces a startlingly fresh and compelling sleuth, Detective Inspector Anjelica Henley, who, at the outset, wonders "not for the first time, what it said about her that she was happier dealing with rapists and murderers than her own husband." Henley, Salim Ramouter, the rookie she resents being saddled with, Dr. Linh Choi, and many others connected to an expertly depicted southeast London neighborhood along the Thames are vital characters of color with complex and resonant back stories. Paul Olivier, aka the Jigsaw Man, an incarcerated, revengeful, disturbingly self-possessed and charismatic serial killer who dismembered his victims, taunts Henley as a copycat serial killer rampages on what was his turf. Matheson's insights into both the procedures and the stress at the underfunded Serial Crime Unit, the extreme pressures a Black woman detective inspector faces, various psychological maladies, and sexual passion and perversion stoke a many-faceted, at times grotesque, nonetheless sensitive, witty, and heart-pounding work of suspense. The perfectly orchestrated cliffhanger ending primes readers for the next installment in Matheson's promising, optioned-for-TV Henley series.

Det. Insp. Anjelica Henley, the protagonist of British author Matheson's so-so debut, still has the scars from where Peter Olivier, known as the Jigsaw Killer for dismembering his victims and leaving a crescent and double cross carved on their bodies, stabbed her at the time she arrested him. Now, two and a half years later, three apparently unconnected people turn up murdered in London, their limbs and heads severed, and Olivier's signature markings cut into their flesh. Since Olivier was convicted, he has been serving multiple life sentences in a prison. After Henley's assigned to the new cases, despite her prior traumatic experience, she interviews Olivier, which gives the murderer the chance to play mind games with her. Meanwhile, Henley's marriage is imperiled by her devotion to her job and her husband's suspicions that she's being unfaithful with her boss. The familiar plot builds to a predictable conclusion. Fans of Thomas Harris's Hannibal Lecter novels will have seen this all before. Agent: Oli Munson, A.M. Heath (U.K.). (Mar.)

The prequel to Downing's World War II Berlin-set "Station" series, Wedding Station introduces John Russell, an English crime reporter at a Berlin newspaper whose grim tales of everyday mayhem are increasingly swallowed by the darkness descending upon Germany under new chancellor Hitler. Graham's latest stand-alone, Danger in Numbers, a state police agent links arms with an FBI specialist on cults to solve a ritualistic murder in small-town northern Florida (125,000-copy first printing). In Kayode's Lightseekers, Nigerian investigative psychologist Philip Taiwo travels to a remote town in his country's south to probe the public torture and murder of three university students in what he comes to realize is a lot more than a moment of crowd madness. In her #ownvoices debut, London-based criminal attorney Matheson, of the City University Crime Writing competition, sets DI Anjelica Henley the unenviable task of stopping a criminal imitating The Jigsaw Man before the real hack-up-his-victims killer gets the copycat himself (100,000-copy first printing). In The Red Book, from Patterson and Illinois justice/Edgar Award winner Ellis (Line of Vision), Det. Bill Harney of the Chicago PD's Special Operations Section is fresh on the job and walking the finest of lines when the turmoil surrounding a drive-by shooting turns political (520,000-copy first printing). In Rollins's Kingdom of Bones, Sigma Force faces huge swaths of Africa where the populace has turned quiescent even as plants and animals become cunningly fierce; has the biosphere run amok or is fiendish engineering involved (250,000-copy first printing)?