cover image Girl Most Likely

Girl Most Likely

Max Allan Collins. Thomas & Mercer, $15.95 trade paper (304p) ISBN 978-1-5420-4058-7

In this disappointing standalone from MWA Grand Master Collins (the Nate Heller series), members of the Galena, Ill., high school class of 2009 gather in their hometown to celebrate their 10-year anniversary, including local Krista Larson, the youngest female police chief in the country. The occasion is marred when Krista learns that a classmate, Sue Logan, was stabbed to death at her home in Florida some months earlier, apparently by someone she knew. When a second, similar murder occurs in Galena, a low-crime city, Krista brings her father, Keith, a retired homicide detective, on board as a special consultant. The plot unfolds as readers will expect, with the investigators working their way through the reunion participants, checking alibis and motives. The sections told from the killer’s perspective, related in the second person, provide the only novelty, but they give away too many details about the murderer’s identity to make the final reveal satisfying. Collins’s fans will hope for a return to form next time. Agent: Dominick Abel, Dominick Abel Literary. (Apr.)