From Publishers Weekly
In Ashford's uneven debut, the first of a series, the police call in Megan Rhys, a Birmingham, England, forensic psychologist, after the discovery of a murdered prostitute leads a detective superintendent to suspect that one of his own men has gone bad. As Megan begins to assemble the clues she needs to construct an accurate profile of what appears to be a serial killer, she gets a plea for help from a female newscaster who has been receiving threatening and obscene messages. Few readers will be surprised when the two inquiries converge, while some may feel the choice to share the killer's suspicious thoughts with the reader halfway through gives too much away. Hopefully, Ashford, a former BBC journalist and the first woman to graduate from Queens' College Cambridge with a criminology master's degree, will use her impressive background more effectively in her next Megan Rhys novel.
(Aug.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Profiler Megan Rhys, of Heartland University's Department of Investigative Psychology, is asked by the West Midlands police department to develop a profile for a serial killer of prostitutes in the Birmingham-Wolverhampton area of Britain. The case is complex because two different blood types are found on some of the victims. Are there two killers working together? And is a bad cop involved? After developing her profile, Megan finds herself virtually ignored by the police, who think they already have their killer. Megan must convince them they are wrong before more people die. Meanwhile, she copes with her estrangement from her unfaithful husband and tries to help a friend who is getting threatening letters. Megan is a likable, complex character, but the resolution of the cases is rather far-fetched and convoluted. However, the fast-paced story keeps the reader involved. A promising debut.
Sue O'BrienCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
