Hades

Horrors abound in Australian author Fox’s first novel, a gritty police procedural set in Sydney. Hades Archer, the crime lord of the Utulla dump, disposes of the waste left over from human lives—and also creates artwork from “warped scraps of metal and pieces of discarded machinery.” Hades once rescued two children, Eden and Eric, from a botched kidnapping and raised them to become police homicide detectives: Eden is dangerously intuitive and creative, Eric lethally wild. Eden and her new partner, tough cop Frank Bennett, track a serial killer who kills for body parts he can sell to dying patients desperate for a transplant. In this twisted noir world, love goes as wrong as it can go, as shown in Hades’s relationship with the children he saved, and Bennett’s relationship with a victim who escaped her captor’s chop shop. Readers will look forward to the sequel set in this not-for-the-squeamish nightmare world down under. Agent: Gaby Naher, Naher Agency (Australia). (Feb.)