Rat Run

May 30, 2016
In the prologue of Ramsay’s dreary, rain-soaked seventh mystery featuring Det. Chief Insp. Colin Anderson and Det. Insp. Winifred “Freddie” Costello (after 2015’s Tears of Angels), Sue Melrose, who lives on Altmore Road in Altmore, Scotland, takes her two young sons one summer day in 1992 into the woods, where they fall victim to an ax murderer. Sue’s immediate neighbor, Andrew Gyle, with whom she quarreled, is convicted of the crime. In 2015, Gyle remains in prison with no chance of parole. When Howard Dirk-Huntley, an Altmore Road resident, drives his Range Rover into a sinkhole, the effort to extract Dirk-Huntley and his vehicle reveals human bones, which turn out to be about 10 years old and show signs of having been chopped. If the ax murderer who did in the Melroses committed what appears to be a crime around 2005, then Gyle is innocent. Anderson and Costello interview an odd mix of people who live on Altmore Road en route to identifying a killer whose motivations will strike many readers as poorly developed. Agent: Jane Gregory, Gregory & Company (U.K.).

June 1, 2016
DCI Colin Anderson, welcomed back to work 14 months after his last case sent him spiraling into post-traumatic stress disorder, lands a doozy: a nightmare that enmeshes him as tightly as the neighbors he questions in a Glasgow suburb. Altmore Wood has been notorious ever since Andrew Gyle was convicted 23 years ago of killing his neighbor Sue Melrose and her young sons with an axe. Now the yawning sinkhole that unexpectedly swallows Howard Dirk-Huntley's Range Rover--a certified disaster on its own for any other neighborhood--reopens the case with a shock when it discloses a set of bones the official story can't account for. Was someone killed 10 years after the Melroses, while Gyle was locked up, still protesting his innocence, by another party entirely--a tactic not at all out of the question for Ramsay (The Night Hunter, 2014, etc.)? Will this discovery end up vindicating Gyle and, in turn, incriminating other locals--investment banker Douglas Lawson and his wife; doddering alcoholic Lynda McMutrie; Michael and Rachel Broadfoot; elusive gym owner Laura Steele and her husband; or Jock Aird, the gentleman farmer whose family once owned the entire landscape? DI Costello is keeping a close eye on Anderson as they investigate, and well she might, since the case turns out to involve a perfect storm of natural disasters, greedy manipulation of same, and rats. Lots and lots of rats. No wonder Costello, reviewing the evidence after the hyperkinetic finale, finds herself wondering, "Were all relationships toxic?" In Glasgow, they just might be. Don't bother looking for the master criminal; the story is awash in malefactors but strong enough to bear their combined weight, which is heavy indeed.

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