Cold Killing

April 15, 2013
British author Delaney’s debut offers enough variation on the familiar detective-tormented-by-a-horrific-childhood theme to leave readers eager for the next in the series. Det. Insp. Sean Corrigan, in charge of a South London Murder Investigation Team, pulled his life together after being sexually abused as a child. That trauma has given him an advantage when confronting violent crimes, as his experience with human darkness enables him to “make leaps in investigation others struggled to understand, filling in the blanks with his unique imagination.” And Corrigan needs any advantage he can get in dealing with a brilliant killer who knows exactly how to strike without leaving clues for forensic scientists. The savage stabbing of a gay man is the first crime that brings the murderer to Corrigan’s attention, but it’s by no means the last. A contrivance toward the end will annoy those expecting a more intelligent resolution, but the permutations in the cat-and-mouse plot line work well. Agent: Simon Trewin, WME.

June 1, 2013
A serial killer stalks London. One might think that whoever stabbed rent boy Daniel Graydon 77 times would have left DI Sean Corrigan of the Serious Crime Group South a wealth of clues to work with. But except for two measly traces--a sole fingerprint on a doorknob and a shoe imprint on the victim's body--the crime scene was unhelpfully tidy. Still, Corrigan, whose experience with rape and brutality is not limited to his job--his father taught him firsthand about depravity--senses that this killer's rampage has barely started. Supervising old-timer DS Dave Donnelly, DS Sally Jones and anyone else he can corral, Corrigan locates James Hellier, a married financier who met up with Graydon at the Utopia nightclub, and intuitively recognizes him as a monster in posh clothing. The battle is on: Will Hellier or Corrigan triumph? Hellier's boss, Sebastian Gibran, is eager to keep the firm of Butler and Mason International Finance out of the tabloids. But that hardly seems possible when police records link Hellier's methods to those of Stefan Korsakov, a perp whose mug shot and prints have mysteriously vanished from the prison system. Hellier outwits numerous surveillance teams and withstands Corrigan's interrogations, and it's possible a bent copper is helping him. Even so, Corrigan links him to more gruesome murders. An almost fatal attack on DS Jones finally lands Hellier in custody, but a major, albeit unlikely, plot twist unveils another possible killer, setting Hellier free to do his worst in far-off climes. A plodding debut with lip-smacking, bloody reminiscences from the perp and dreary foul-ups from the cops.

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May 1, 2013
Detective Inspector Sean Corrigan, leader of one of South London's murder-investigation units, arrives at a crime scene at 3 a.m. and finds a young man savagely murdered in his flat. It looks like a straightforward domestic crime, but the complete absence of forensic evidence and Corrigan's near-synesthetic intuition tell him that this murder is something much darker. His intuition is correct: the culprit is a serial killer who changes his MO for each killing. First-novelist Delaney, once a London homicide investigator, has blended the police procedural with the psychological thriller. The result is a tense, fast-paced, believable look at London policing, complete with many fascinating details, for example, Scotland Yard views psychological profiling as of very limited value, preferring to maintain the Method Index, a searchable collection of unusual crimes. The serial killer functions as narrator on occasion, and his ruminations of omnipotence suggest that he misunderstands Nietzsche's idea of the Superman. Delaney's debut is stylish, ambitious, and a surefire winner.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)