Close to the Bone (Logan McRae, Book 8)
Logan McRae is doing his best to carry on after the harrowing events of Shatter the Bones (2012). His girlfriend, Samantha, is still in the hospital, and his grip on reality is slipping (“Like it or not, you’re still alive” is the reminder taped to his mirror)—good thing there’s plenty of crime to keep his mind off things. A high-profile movie is being filmed on his Aberdeen, Scotland, beat, and someone is reenacting occult scenes from the hit novel it’s based on, right down to the bleeding, burning, and hanging of suspected witches. Someone else is battering Asian men, who refuse to identify a culprit. And the aging Wee Hamish is still trying to bestow his criminal empire on McRae, earning the police detective unwelcome attention from Reuben, the thug who actually wants to inherit. This eighth series installment delivers everything MacBride’s fans have come to expect: knotty plotting, gruesome crime scenes, swinging gallows humor, and some of the most creative cursing in contemporary crime fiction. An extremely solid follow-up to last year’s return-to-form. --Keir Graff