The Stranger You Know

March 17, 2014
Maeve Kerrigan and her colleagues pursue “the Gentleman Killer,” who poses his victims’ corpses in pristine white on beds of flowers, in Casey’s exciting if flawed fourth police procedural featuring the London detective constable (after 2012’s The Last Girl). For Kerrigan, the case hits dangerously close to home, both because of her kinship to the victims, who are also attractive, single, professional women, and because of the eerie similarities to the murder of 15-year-old Angela Poole two decades earlier, in which the prime suspect was none other than Kerrigan’s own infuriatingly sexist but often inspired partner, Det. Insp. Josh Derwent. Torn between conflicting loyalties, Kerrigan is tested even further when it starts to look as if she might be turning into a target herself. With its vibrant cast of characters, not least of them the feisty but fragile Kerrigan, this page-turner should reward series fans and newcomers alike—right up until the disappointing deus ex machina denouement. Agent: Zoë Pagnamenta, Zoë Pagnamenta Agency.