A Dark, Divided Self

November 1, 2019
When a successful young lawyer, Zoe Roberts, is found stabbed and decapitated on a running path, the case is assigned to DI Bernard Watts. Normally, he'd be pleased to have such a challenging murder to solve, but, on this occasion, he's feeling hampered and irritated after his boss assigns both an ambitious but hopelessly green recruit, Chloe Judd, and criminologist Will Traynor, still recovering from the murder of his wife, to the case. As Watts and his team interview the family and friends of the victim, they hit roadblock after roadblock?Roberts, it appears, was a wonderful person who couldn't possibly have had any enemies. However, when more bodies are found, the case takes a surprising turn, with Traynor and Judd make solid contributions to the tedious task of sifting through clues to find means, motive, and opportunity. This series debut is a solid, skillfully written police drama with plenty of twists.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)

December 20, 2021
The discovery of human remains outside the city of Manchester that match the DNA of 21-year-old Amy Peters, a university student who vanished three years earlier, drives British author Cross’s disappointing third mystery featuring criminologist Will Traynor (after 2021’s Devil in the Detail). The disappearances of Peters and four other female students led their colleagues to organize take-back-the-night marches and the media to dub their abductor the Phantom. With the Manchester police having made no progress, Det. Chief Insp. Bernard Watts taps Traynor, who often assists the Birmingham police, to help his team crack the case, a daunting task complicated when a key piece of evidence—masking tape that may have been used to gag Peters and may have genetic material from the Phantom—goes missing from the police evidence room. Cross offers neither genuine suspense nor innovation, and the superficial exploration of the murderer’s psyche could have been concocted by an author without Cross’s credentials as a forensic psychologist. Others have done a better job of handling this well-traversed terrain. Agent: Jade Kavanagh, Darley Anderson Literary (U.K.).

Starred review from December 1, 2021
Cross' third Will Traynor novel finds the forensic scientist called in to assist DCI Bernard Watts with a particularly thorny case. Partial human remains found in a forest outside of Birmingham turn out to be those of Amy Peters, a student at the University of Manchester who has been missing for three years--a time frame during which four other women have also disappeared from Manchester, nearly 100 miles from Birmingham. Enlisting both Traynor and forensic psychologist Julian Devenish, Watts attempts to determine why the killer apparently chose to dispose of Peters so far from where she was kidnapped. The answer provides the key to a horrifying story that not only leads to the killer, but also to serious questions about public trust in the police. Along the way there are plenty of unexpected twists sure to set pulses racing, leading to a shock ending guaranteed to blindside even the most experienced thriller reader. A fine and very timely police procedural.

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December 1, 2021
The discovery of a corpse in a secluded, wooded corner of England blossoms into a hunt for a twisted serial killer. DNA analysis of the meager remains found by a dog walker leads back to a missing person case in Manchester. But why would whoever killed Amy Peters bring her so far south just to dump her, not even buried, on Forestry Commission land in Brampton? That's just one of the questions that plagues DCI Bernard Watts, who's sorrier than ever that he didn't retire when he had the chance. A more pressing question is whether Amy's death is linked to four other abductions of young women from Manchester between 2016 and 2018. On the chance that the cases are linked, Watts announces to his squad that he's arranged for two experts to help with the investigation. Criminologist Dr. Will Traynor is well known to his officers, having helped them in the past. But forensic psychologist Julian Devenish is a new face, someone whose knowledge of Manchester Watts expects to come in handy. Some of Watts' men, like rough-and-tumble Adrian Jones, are skeptical of the academic pair. Others, like Police Constable Chloe Judd, are all in. Chloe thinks that developing a profile of the killer is just as important as learning what she can about the victims. But is the young detective ready to take on a killer whose depravity knows no limits? Cross pulls no punches in a shocking tale of crime and punishment.

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