The lies you wrote

FBI agent and forensic linguist Raisa Susanto is accustomed to proving herself in a room full of men who doubt her ability to suss out motive and craft criminal profiles solely from a suspect's scrawled notes or message board screeds. While advising on a suspected serial killer copying a decades-past familicide, she develops an easy rapport with forensic psychologist Callum Kilkenny, even when they don't see eye-to-eye. Her trust in civilian informant Delaney Moore is less certain, and the deeper Raisa digs into her online writings, the more she is suspicious of Delaney's intentions on the team. Chapters told from Delaney's perspective heighten the suspense. Small-town gossip, the appearance of a true crime podcaster, and vigilante-esque online forum entries further complicate Raisa's work before she uncovers the truth in a shocking finale. Labuskes' series starter lays solid groundwork for future episodes featuring agents Susanto and Kilkenny, both complex characters with intriguing backstories, motivations, and personal blind spots. Hand to fans of Iris Johansen's forensic sculptor Eve Duncan and other detectives who take an unconventional approach to solving crime.

Labuskes (Gretchen White series) opens her terrifying joyride into cybercrime in 2023 with two murders in a Washington State town. When a gruesome video is posted to a social media site and spotted by moderator Delany, she notifies the FBI. Quickly, the team connects what appear to be copycat killings to three violent deaths back in 1998 in the same town. FBI forensic linguist Raisa Susanto is on the case, studying the writings and speech patterns of suspects, while Delany uses her professional searching skills to pinpoint bad actors through their web rantings. In her quest for internet stardom, podcaster Jenna insinuates herself into the team. Looping together the murders with the hidden links among the three women, Labuskes imagines how a murderer might use the internet to kill as effectively as a sharpshooter uses a weapon and introduces an academic linguist able to track a criminal's idiolects like cops use fingerprints to identify a perpetrator. VERDICT Women pathologists (Patricia Cornwell) and forensic anthropologists (Elly Griffiths) have starred in recent mysteries that appeared on best-of-the-year lists. Through her terrific new heroine, Labuskes has the fire and smarts to join them on the award dais.--Barbara Conaty

Twenty-five years after a double murder stunned the little town of Everly, Washington, a copycat seems to be following in the original killer's path. If you ask veteran Everly sheriff Samantha Mason, there's never been any doubt who killed Timothy and Rebecca Parker, a pair of brilliant mathematicians who taught at the local college, and plunged their three young daughters into foster care. It was their teenage son, Alex, who'd already displayed troubling enough behavior to put his school counselor on alert even before he wrote a story about a cannibal serial killer a few days before his parents' deaths. But Alex died, too, obligingly leaving behind a confessional suicide note to head off any doubts about his guilt. Now Delaney Moore, a content moderator for a social media site, has pulled a video showing the corpses of Bob and Gina Balducci, one of whom had an uncomfortable relationship with the Parkers, staged in a remarkably similar scene. The discovery brings FBI agent Callum Kilkenny to Everly, along with FBI forensic linguist Raisa Susanto, who's trying to live down a fatal mistake she made in identifying the author of an anonymous missive from the idiolectic patterns in which she specializes. As Raisa beats the bushes for evidence she can use to redeem herself, she (naturally) doesn't realize that Labuskes is alternating the chapters that track the stages of her investigation with chapters from the viewpoint of Delaney, whose consistent determination to take violent revenge on anyone who's ever wronged her leaves Raisa's own troubled childhood in the dust. So Raisa never has a chance to read that "Delaney wasn't made for love. She was made for death." As untidy and unflinching as a tornado whose eye is more frightful still. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.