cover image Angel of Darkness

Angel of Darkness

Katy Munger. Severn, $28.95 (224p) ISBN 978-0-7278-8131-1

A teenage girl’s murder on the grounds of the Holloway Institute, a mental health facility in a small Delaware town, baffles the police, both living and spectral, in Munger’s eerie, somber third Dead Detective mystery (after Desolate Angel and Angel Interrupted, both under the pseudonym Chaz McGee). Suspicion falls on Holloway inmate Otis Redman Parker, a stone-cold serial killer, since the victim was killed in Parker’s distinctively perverse style, the details of which were never made public. But Parker is locked in his ward at all times. The two detectives on the case have some otherworldly assistance from the spirit of the late Kevin Fahey, a failure as a husband, father, and detective, who hovers about, eternally trapped in limbo, yet serving as the best sort of omniscient observer. Munger tips her hand a bit too early, but she keeps the action spinning until the final page. Agent: Jane Chelius, Jane Chelius Literary Agency. (June)