Starred Review. Not for the faint of heart or weak of stomach, MacBride's superbly unsettling fourth novel (after Bloodshot) sets Det. Sgt. Logan McRae on the trail of a serial killer in Aberdeen, Scotland. When human remains are discovered first in a shipping container and later in a local butcher shop, McRae's superiors send him to round up Kenneth Wiseman (aka the Flesher), who terrorized the city 20 years earlier but was released on a technicality. Det. Insp. David Insch, who was part of the original Wiseman investigation, is determined to see the man behind bars. But when tragedy strikes, leaving Insch teetering on the edge of throwing away his entire career, McRae realizes that the police have been looking in the wrong direction. As more body parts turn up, McRae must fit the grisly pieces together before time runs out. MacBride's dry wit turns what could have been a gratuitously gory slasher story into a crackling thriller. (Oct.)
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Starred Review Apparently, rain and dark skies are what’s needed to cultivate crime writers: Scotland has a bumper crop, with growing talents such as MacBride joining veterans like Ian Rankin and Denise Mina in a fertile field. In MacBride’s fourth and most ambitious effort, Aberdeen’s Detective Sergeant Logan McRae and cohorts are trying to catch a serial killer. “The Flesher” wears a Margaret Thatcher mask and a butcher’s apron and has a butcher’s skill with blades: the victims are professionally bled, skinned, and sectioned. But the butchery doesn’t stop there: vacuum-packed pieces of human meat are turning up in shops. The good news is that the police think they know who the Flesher is. The bad news is that they don’t know where he is. McRae and his cranky crew—the hypertensive Insch, the icy McAllister, the unsentimental Steel—work together with the ease of a veteran cast, and MacBride adds a couple of new faces, including a BBC cameraman who’s filming the investigation, to keep the chemistry fresh. MacBride may have hit his stride in book one, but here he breaks into a run. The push-pull of tensions from within and without exacerbates a seemingly unsolvable case whose horrors take on staggering dimensions. But though the blood, booze, and rain do pour, persistent black humor sweetens the potion. With weather like that, you’d have to be able to laugh at just about anything. --Keir Graff