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Well, you can't fault the title. In fact, it was one of the things that made me buy it in the first place reminding me of the advertising slogan: It does what it says on the tin. And so it proves as Detective Brendan Healy, newly promoted and newly arrived in Oneida County, and his colleague Detective Delaney arrive at a large, isolated farmhouse after a 911 call from the owner reporting an intruder. There, in the bedroom under a blood soaked coverlet, is the body of Rebecca Heilshorn, stabbed many times.

An hour or so later her brother Kevin arrives for a family meeting, and is truly grief stricken when he learns of the death of his sister and lapses into profound shock. So devastated, in fact, that Delaney immediately calls Olivia Jane, a psychologist and grief therapist to talk to him straight away. In a shocking development just a few hours later Healy puts a bullet in Kevin's head when he attempts to kill Olivia Jane in a murderous attack. The extremely wealthy Heilshorn parents have yet to arrive, but intend to bring private detectives and have already indicated that they want Healy suspended from the case.

Detective Brendan Healy is far from a typical mid-Western cop, a man who dropped out of college just when he was on the verge of his PhD in Neurobiology, and a recovering drunk who lost his wife and child along the way. When investigating the case, clues brushed aside by the truculent Delaney are examined in forensic detail by Healy. What, for example, is the meaning of the handwritten cryptic phrase: I was born under the black smoke of September that he discovers on the back of a framed photograph in the farmhouse.

The opening dozen or so police procedural chapters are crisply executed, written by someone who knows a great deal about police work. This is a long read, a connected trilogy of stories, that I guarantee will take you to unexpected places. Black Ops government departments, very strange science, a hint of the supernatural, disgrace and redemption, all combine to deliver an absorbing, gripping novel.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a murdered heiress in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a detective. She certainly finds a good one in the tenacious Healy with his dogged determination to unravel the puzzle and find all of the answers. You won't see them coming, and the book is all the better for it. Highly recommended.

The paperback and Kindle edition is unavailable at Amazon at present (January 2020) so you'll need a bit of a detective work to track it down. It will be well worth it.

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