Dust and Desire

September 7, 2015
In Williams’s highly effective series launch, a serial killer thriller set in and around London, the mysterious Kara Geenan hires PI Joel Sorrell to locate her 18-year-old brother, Jason Pythian. “She was crazier than a purse full of whelks,” Sorrell observes, illustrating his pithy Chandlerisms, which require a command of British slang to fully decode. Sorrell, an ex-cop whose only companion is his cat, is tormented both by the vicious murder of his wife, Rebecca, three years earlier and the subsequent disappearance of his 13-year-old daughter, Sarah. After Sorrell endures a frightful beating, he tries to untangle an array of corpses that somehow are connected to the case of the missing Jason. Williams (The Unblemished) expertly limns Sorrell’s self-destructive tendencies in his bitter asides, but the book’s greatest strength is its portrait of Wire, the young serial killer whose horrible childhood ultimately sets him on his monstrous path. The suspenseful face-off between Sorrell and Wire carries an unexpected charge of pathos.

September 1, 2015
A tough loner private eye gets stuck investigating a case that he senses is tied to his terrible past. Though her brother, Jason Phythian, hasn't been missing long enough to justify a police report, Kara Geenan is desperate to find him. At least, that's the story she tells PI Joel Sorrell when she hires him to take the case. For some reason, though, Sorrell's not sure he trusts her. He's the kind of guy whose life has taught him not to trust: his wife's murder years ago was followed by his daughter Sarah's disappearance. These traumas seem long in the past, and Sorrell has mainly put them out of his head, but when he's attacked in his search for Jason, clues link the disappearance to his own troubled history. Soon he's set off to his childhood home of Liverpool. Never mind that he has to leave just as things are heating up with his-well, do men who are rough around the edges have crushes? The change in scene corresponds to a change in the point of view, as Williams delves into the mind of a killer, though whom he's killed is not entirely clear. While it's not obvious whether this interlude is meant as an explanation for the murderer's actions or just a look inside his sick mind, it's clear that Sorrell's going to have his hands full when the two finally meet. The take on motive doesn't live up to Williams' setup, which has a lot of moving parts. The investigator's sections are often compelling, but the violence that accompanies the killer's perspective doesn't produce enough of a payoff.

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December 15, 2015
This is a gush of a novel, a blast of languagethe knife was flesh hot from lying against his thigh that all but overpowers the narrative. The plot is a spin on the well-worn theme of past events resurfacing and doing unholy damage. Joel Sorrell is a London PI, vodka-soaked and grieving for his murdered wife and missing daughter. A young woman, nothing to write home about but maybe a postcard to a mate, hires him to find her vanished brother. His inquiry strips layer from layer. He confronts a fellow so ugly it was like he was trying at it. Finally, he begins to understand the investigation is about him. Sometimes the writing has a sensory life of its own. A door opens with a sigh of rotting wallpaper and ancient dust. Other timesand this will be a matter of tastethe language stops to admire itself and drags everything down. A novel for patient readers, then, with an eye for style and a willingness to wait for the action scenes, which are grisly yet always beautifully described.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)