Title: Shepherd of Wolves
Author: R.J. King
Date: 2021
Quote: " [B]efore he had his next guest over...Edmund made sure that there weren't any visible remains from the last one."
Trigger warnings: Absolutely nobody is going to enjoy this book. It's about a serial murderer and a police detective. The gory scenes are "tastefully" narrated, but there are a lot of them. People who enjoy this type of book like the satisfaction of having the murderer caught. This book ends with him still at large, with a suggestion that the detective may be so discouraged that there won't even be a sequel.
Meh. The serial murderer's method is consistent. The detective knows who he is. When the detective hears of a similar crime in a different town, he can go out there and nail the murderer to the wall. If he has the energy left. So it's one of those "Lady or the Tiger," you pick the ending, sort of stories.
For those looking for male point of view, action and adventure (at least the protagonist observes it, and seethes with frustration because he's not the one doing it), and a deeply decent Black male protagonist (even if, at fifty-two, he's starting to think of himself as "the old man"), this book has those things too. You will like Detective Wright, who's been wrong before, and knows it. I only wish that, even if he is too "old" to bring the murderer in, himself, the story had assured readers that Wright had found someone who would.
As things are, this novel is too much like the real news.
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