The Hook

In O’Mara’s gripping fifth Raymond Donne mystery (after 2016’s Nasty Cutter), Donne, a former NYPD cop who’s now a Brooklyn public school dean, is shocked to learn that his friend Maurice “MoJo” Joseph, a recovering drug addict who was doing community service at Donne’s school, was shot dead with an arrow on the school’s roof. His pregnant widow is even more distraught when the toxicology exam concludes that the supposedly clean MoJo had fentanyl in his system. MoJo’s partner in a security firm, meanwhile, is upset to learn that he was making business deals that he’d kept secret. The plot thickens when one of MoJo’s secret clients proves to be a white nationalist leader, a reveal that coincides with Donne’s reporter girlfriend’s series of stories about a teenager who grew up in that movement. Some humor, such as an NYPD friend of Donne’s jokingly referring to him as Jessica Fletcher for his habit of stumbling into homicides, compensates for some overly pat plot elements. This is a solid whodunit, packed with a number of surprises. (Mar.)