Hand for a Hand

September 10, 2012
Scottish author Muir makes his U.S. debut with a ploddingly predictable whodunit, his second to feature Fife Det. Chief Insp. Andy Gilchrist (after Eye for an Eye). When a woman’s severed hand is found clutching a note addressed to Gilchrist on the 17th hole of St. Andrews’ Old Course, he’s determined not only to head the investigation but to identify the victim. As more body parts spring up on the golf course, each with dire messages for Gilchrist, it’s clear that the killer is targeting him. Gilchrist’s rocky relationship with his grown children, Jack and Maureen, becomes even more fraught after the murdered woman is identified as Chloe Fullerton, Jack’s girlfriend, making the detective positive that his daughter will be the next target. While Gilchrist and his team scramble to identify which criminal might hold such a grudge, Gilchrist spends too much of his time blustering about a case that most readers will have cracked early on. Agent: Al Zuckerman, Writers House.

October 1, 2012
DCI Andy Gilchrist of the Fife Constabulary's Crime Management Department is targeted for revenge. When the first body part and a note screaming "Murder" appears by the 17th green on St. Andrews' Old Course, DCI Andy Gilchrist becomes the lead investigator. He is appalled to learn that Ronnie Watts, whom he beat almost to death for seducing his teenage daughter, Maureen, years back, has also been assigned to the case. When more of the victim is discovered on the 16th fairway, Gilchrist has a horrifying suspicion whom the body parts belong to: his sculptor son Jack's girlfriend, Chloe. This time there's a note proclaiming "Massacre." By the time the next body part, branded with the word "Bludgeon," is discovered, Gilchrist knows he's being personally engaged by the dismemberer, a fact borne out when his daughter goes missing. Stopovers at the pub, nightmares and waking feelings of helplessness almost defeat him, but with collegial and erotic assists from DS Nancy "Nance" Wilson, Gilchrist begins to make sense of the ties among Chloe and Maureen, the men in their lives and the vendetta set in motion by an incarcerated psychosadist named Bully who may be released in two years. As Chloe's decapitated head is tossed in a car boot along with the much-debased Maureen, Gilchrist scrambles to decipher meanings hidden in Burns' poems by the main villain. The trail leads him and Nance to the Auld Aisle Cemetery in time to find a casket filled with drug loot--and perhaps in time to save his daughter and confront Ronnie once more. Muir's second engagement for the divorced Gilchrist (Eye for an Eye, 2008) rests several rungs down from Rankin and Harvey but is still fairly high up on the Scottish police procedural scale.

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Starred review from December 1, 2012

Scotland's famed St. Andrews golf course is not a place one generally finds body parts, but this killer goes for the unexpected. He has strategically placed limbs (beginning with a hand in a bunker) and labeled them so that DCI Andrew Gilchrist knows someone with a vendetta is targeting him. Gilchrist's panic increases when he identifies the first victim as his own son's girlfriend. Compounding his problems, Gilchrist has been partnered with a detective he doesn't trust. As the vicious killer taunts in codes and riddles, Gilchrist enters a terrifying nightmare when someone he loves even more is kidnapped. VERDICT Muir's popular Scottish series makes a welcome U.S. debut. Terse, dark, and ultimately very scary, this thrilling police procedural rings with emotional turmoil and desperation. The hero's personal failings and his subsequent attempts to reach out to his loved ones make for a memorable, draining read. [See Prepub Alert, 7/2/12.]

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