You Can Run

October 1, 2017
A troubled cop, an even more troubled novelist, and a serial killer go 15 feverish rounds.It all begins, or begins to end, when a stolen car chased by the police crashes into mechanic John Blythe's garage, revealing inside the figure of half-dead Amanda Cassidy, stripped, starved, and locked into a homemade pillory. Venturing into Blythe's basement, detectives Will Turner and Emma Beck make an even more horrifying discovery: three sealed barrels containing the remains of no less than 12 victims of the Red River Killer, who's kidnapped, assaulted, and killed 14 women. Assigned to hunt down and capture the fugitive Blythe, Will remains disturbingly fixated instead on reconstructing the Red River Killer's long career, focusing especially on the vexing question of which of his victims' mortal parts isn't contained in those barrels. When his path crosses that of Jeremy Townsend, a former novelist driven to equally self-tormenting behavior by the memory of his wife, Melanie West, the Killer's sixth victim, the two men explosively fail to bond. But their relationship looks positively healthy compared to that of Blythe, a resourceful quarry who's used to living off the land, and the sometime accomplice he's dubbed the WORM, whose agenda turns out to be quite different from his. With so many free agents prowling the English countryside, complications are bound to crop up, and brother, do they ever, creating both prospective action sequences and retrospective puzzles in the wheels-within-wheels manner of Jeffery Deaver. Although exasperated readers may often share Will's sense that his detective work is "all just feelings, hunches," Mosby (The Reckoning on Cane Hill, 2016, etc.) maintains a command of his convoluted plot that's truly dazzling.A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma guaranteed to play havoc with both your brain cells and your heartbeat.

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Starred review from October 9, 2017
This fusion of mystery, police procedural, and noir thriller from CWA Dagger Award–winner Mosby (The Reckoning on Cane Hill) is pure crime fiction gold. A serial killer who has been abducting women from an unspecified area of England for almost two decades is identified after a car accidentally crashes into his garage and reveals a nearly-dead victim. Det. Insp. Will Turner, whose first love was one of the victims, vows to capture the man whom the media has dubbed the Red River Killer. The search is complicated by the husband of one of the victims, who appears to know more than he should about the case, and by a strange set of notes allegedly from the killer sent to the police that may indicate the involvement of another person. The narrative is powered by darkly lyrical prose and a cast of nuanced characters, but it’s the bombshell plot twists at novel’s end that will leave readers more than satisfied. This is one of those exceedingly rare novels that’s virtually impossible to put down. Agent: Carolyn Whitaker, London Independent Books (U.K.).

October 15, 2017
Early in this perplexing thriller, the detective frowns at a shelf of crime fiction and disses violence as entertainment, adding it all felt the same. Not here. From the offbeat beginninga car crashes into a garage and reveals a woman held prisonerto the tangled solution, author Mosby is breaking the mold. Responders find the remains of 13 dead women in the house with the garage, and Detective Inspector Will Turner suspects he's found the lair of a serial killer. But he must be careful. His superiors can't know he loved one of the victims or he'll be taken off the case. And he must keep control as some mighty strange folk emerge. Like the novelist who writes about his wifeanother of the killer's victimsin a way that gives Turner the creeps. As the end looms, we learn that the killer had a publicist who had woven a story not from words and pictures, but from reality itself. Add doses of introspection, and one has a novel that mystifies while it spooks. A thoughtful entertainment, ideal for readers seeking the offbeat.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)