March 20, 2023
La Salle’s second thriller featuring NYPD detectives Phee Freeman and Quincy Cavanaugh (after 2022’s Laws of Depravity) is another nail-biter that never sacrifices character for plot. Freeman and Cavanaugh have become celebrities after stopping a killer who targeted New York clergy. Their moment of glory is derailed, though, by news that Freeman’s older sibling A.J. has been murdered: the killer removed A.J.’s eyelids and internal organs before abandoning the corpse in Manhattan’s Chinatown. Freeman is wracked with guilt, having been estranged from A.J. for years, and winds up working on A.J.’s murder with Cavanaugh. The investigation gets even more complex when the partners learn that several murders with a similar m.o. were committed in Queens three years earlier. Police believed that killer was Daria Zibik, who’s since been incarcerated, and now fear a copycat is at work. La Salle treads lurid territory without straining credulity. Fans of Jeffery Deaver will be pleased. Agent: Rockelle Henderson, Rock Inked.