Life for a Life

July 20, 2015
In Muir’s effective but gory fourth police procedural starring Det. Chief Insp. Andy Gilchrist (after 2013’s Tooth for a Tooth), the discovery of the frozen body of an escaped sex slave on the east coast of Scotland alerts methodical Gilchrist and his detectives to the presence of an especially ruthless human trafficker. Gilchrist is initially startled by the display of deadly brutality, but his new partner, Det. Sgt. Jessie Janes, a quick-witted and sharp-tongued young woman, recognizes the MO of the elusive Kumar, who enjoys butchering his foes and even beheaded an undercover cop in front of a video camera. As parts of his operation are compromised, Kumar lops off unnecessary underlings and intrusive police—until Gilchrist himself winds up at the man’s mercy. Watching Gilchrist try to manage the emotional dynamics of his high-strung team is fascinating, but it’s even more interesting to watch the detective’s old-fashioned pluck confront the barely disguised primitive bloodlust of his quarry.

August 1, 2015
This Scottish police procedural set in and around St. Andrews gets off to a flying start, with the bodies of three young women discovered in a single day. The first body has been left in the December cold for days, just down from the Fife Coastal Path. The two other bodies are found together, in the kitchen of an abandoned cottage, dead from multiple stab wounds and with signs of sociopathic play on their bodies. This is rough stuff, even for Muir's series hero, Detective Chief Inspector Andy Gilchrist of the St. Andrews' Crime Management Division, but it's especially shocking for his new partner, Jessie Janes, just transferred from Glasgow. Janes expected a dull round of writing parking tickets in St. Andrews. Gilchrist and Janes' uneasy relationship crackles with humor throughout (Janes is a stand-up comic by avocation), providing much-needed relief to a mystery that moves deep within a cesspool of human trafficking. This is Scottish noir at its edgiest. The procedure is first-rate, the suspense shivery, but Muir is almost criminally unsparing in grotesque details.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)