The Heights

February 10, 2020
In the arresting first chapter of Bilal’s complicated second Crane and Drake mystery (after 2019’s The Divinities), a child is kicking a nylon bag on a London Underground train when a heavy object “wrapped in dirty cloth and what looked like newspaper” rolls out of the bag. The train’s passengers begin to scream once they realize it’s a severed head. Cal Drake, a former police detective who has formed a private investigation service with former pathologist Rayhana “Ray” Crane, gets a call from a police colleague who informs Cal that the head was wrapped in a newspaper carrying an article about a case Cal was involved in four years earlier. Cal joins the search for a killer. Meanwhile, Cal and Ray look into the disappearance of a young woman studying at the London School of Economics. Each of these investigations is merely a doorway into a convoluted conspiracy involving murder, money, and international crime. The protagonists’ backstories intrigue, but aren’t enough to make them three-dimensional. Bilal writes well enough to suggest he can remedy this defect next time. Agent: Euan Thorneycroft, A.M. Heath (U.K.).

February 15, 2020
The new investigative partnership of two former Met detectives is strained by some personally painful cases. The discovery of a severed head aboard the London Underground sets the city abuzz. Calil Drake, a former inspector with the Metropolitan Police and now a private detective, immediately connects the event with the disappearance of Zelda, an informant who'd been helping him build a case against crime boss Goran Malevich. A torso washed up on the beach in Brighton four years ago, and Drake's instinct tells him that the recently discovered head belongs to that torso and is Zelda's. As he presses former police colleagues to investigate, guilt and remorse about Zelda thrust him into bitter memories and compel him to probe feverishly on his own. Meanwhile, Drake and his partner, Dr. Rayhana Crane (The Divinities, 2019), clash over whether to investigate the disappearance of young Kuwaiti student Howeida Almanara. The chief sticking point is the obnoxious personality of the potential client, fulsome television celebrity Marco Foulkes. Drake finds him unctuous and suspicious; what's his relationship to the young Howeida? Crane, who knew Foulkes as a child, can't disagree but is intrigued by the case and pursues it. Crane also feels compelled to look into some financial irregularities involving Edmund Crane, the elderly father with whom she's always had a difficult relationship. She's amazed to learn that this path leads back to Foulkes. While Crane's probe follows white-collar crime among the upper crust, Drake delves the lower depths and the most cutthroat criminals. Might the two possibly be connected as well? Bilal's stylishly written second Crane and Drake mystery offers complex portraits of the detective duo.

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April 15, 2020
In this follow-up to The Divinities (2019), forensic psychologist Ray Crane and her new partner, former Metropolitan Police DI Cal Drake, have been hired by Crane's childhood frenemy, Marco Foulkes, to find his missing girlfriend, Howeida Almanara. They're pursuing their only lead, a menacing uncle who visited Howeida just before her disappearance, when Drake learns that he's under fire in the Met's latest headline-grabbing case. A severed head has been left on a commuter train, thoughtfully wrapped in a months-old newspaper chronicling Drake's supposed links to Serbian mobsters. The head belongs to Zelda, an informant Drake managed to turn against gang lord Goran Malevich. Zelda was murdered after Drake sent her into hiding, and he blames himself. While her hunt for Foulkes' girlfriend forces Crane to face painful family secrets, Drake is determined to find Zelda's killer and clear himself in the process. A gritty London backdrop lends the perfect level of menace to Crane and Drake's gut-wrenching battles with their pasts; another fine display of Bilal's top-notch storytelling.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)