At Rope's End

November 7, 2016
Screenwriter Kay’s intriguing mystery debut blends academia and law enforcement in what looks to be a promising marriage made in the name of crime. Det. Constance Maclean of the Seattle PD is convinced that the murder of a beautiful young woman, whose body was fished out of a cranberry bog, is the work of a serial killer. Clues are hard to come by, and because she’s bucking a senior officer who doesn’t put any stock in her hunches, Maclean decides to circumvent department policy. Turning to forensic psychologist James Verraday, a university professor, as a consultant is a definite breach of protocol, but it sets the stage for an enduring partnership. Both characters are single. Both have complicated pasts and even more complicated presents, and both share similar political ideologies, though Verraday is more liberal. Aside from rather lengthy passages expounding on topics such as criminal profiling and bipolarism, Kay spins a good whodunit with a juicy bonus twist at the end.

November 15, 2016
TV writer/producer Kay's debut mystery (Sink and Destroy, 2014, etc.) lures a forensic psychologist out of his University of Washington classroom to help a Seattle cop track the killer of two known victims and perhaps many more.Ever since a local cop tackled and cuffed him during a peaceful demonstration, Dr. James Verraday, who'd already seen his mother killed and his sister crippled by a police car that ran a red light and slammed into their car when he was still a child, has been perfectly comfortable with this new relationship with the Seattle Police Department: suing it for damages. While his lawsuit is still pending, he's surprised, and not in a good way, to meet Detective Constance Maclean, who begs his help in identifying the man who beat and strangled Rachel Friesen, who moonlighted as a fetish model for the Assassin Girls website. Even though Detective Bob Fowler, the lead investigator in the murder of high-end escort Alana Carmichael six months ago, has focused on Peter Cray, a man with a long rap sheet whose DNA was recovered from Alana's clothing, as his leading suspect, Maclean sees so many similarities between the two cases that she's convinced the two murders are the work of a single man, and she wants Verraday to use his profiling skills to identify that man. Verraday refuses indignantly but, changing his mind after a vivid nightmare, agrees to lend his uniquely categorical judgment to Maclean. "Peter Cray didn't murder Alana Carmichael," he assures Maclean, and briskly dismisses fetish shop owner Aldous Whitney as a suspect even before he meets him: "Whitney's not the killer." But who is? Detection-cum-romance enlivened by the profiler's own moderate but heartfelt interest in sadomasochistic erotica, which produces an ending as twisted as it is gratuitous.

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Starred review from January 1, 2017

Venturing into the dark world of serial killers and Seattle's rainy milieu, this debut mystery introduces forensic psychologist Dr. James Verraday, paired up with a cop to track a murderer with a penchant for models. Trusting his new partner is a stretch, as Verraday has a complicated past with the police--his own rough-and-tumble run-in with officers (he was peacefully protesting, they were rough) and his family's violent confrontation with law enforcement (a police car running a red light killed his mother and left his sister disabled). But Det. Constance Maclean doesn't toe the party line, and when a body turns up in a bog with injuries that seem to fit the serial killer's pattern, Maclean seeks out Verraday for assistance. An uneasy partnership develops, driven by their mutual desire for truth and justice, as well as Verraday's undeniable skills as a profiler. VERDICT This is a promising start from a fresh voice in forensic fiction, a subgenre that's always in need of new blood as the technology changes. With intricate backstories and believable issues, Verraday and Maclean are a duo to watch.

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