Close to the Bone

At the start of Black’s intricately plotted seventh Theresa MacLean mystery (after 2013’s The Price of Innocence), Theresa arrives early one morning at Cleveland’s cash-strapped Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner’s office, where she literally steps into a pool of blood seeping from the fatal wounds of deskman Darryl Johnson. More homicides rapidly follow elsewhere, and Theresa, an intrepid 12-year veteran of the Trace Evidence Department, connects the killings to the decade-old strangling of coworker Diane Allman. Theresa descends Nancy Drew–like into creepy morgue vaults, eludes a lascivious morgue assistant, and ingeniously extricates herself from the trunk of the killer’s car, but she overlooks the close attention police sergeant Louis Shephard is paying to the case—and to her. Black, who is a forensic scientist, certainly knows her field; readers should be prepared for medical minutiae and graphic autopsy details that tend toward grisly overkill. Agent: Vicky Bijur, Vicky Bijur Literary Agency. (Oct.)