Everett Larkin works for the Cold Case Squad: an elite – if understaffed and overworked – group of detectives who solve the forgotten deaths of New York City. Larkin is different from others, but his deduction skills are unmatched and his memory for minute details is unparalleled.
So when a spring thunderstorm uproots a tree in Madison Square Park, unearthing a crate with human remains inside, the best Cold Case detective is assigned the job. And when a death mask, like those prominent during the Victorian era, is found with the body, Larkin requests assistance from the Forensic Artists Unit and receives it in the form of Detective Ira Doyle, his polar opposite in every way.
Factual reasoning and facial reconstruction put Larkin and Doyle on a trail of old homicide cases and a murderer obsessed with casting his victims’ likeness in death. Include some unapologetic flirting from Doyle, and this case just may end up killing Everett Larkin.
Rating: Narration – A; Content – A
C.S. Poe kicks off her latest series of m/m mysteries in grand style with Madison Square Murders, book one in her New York-set Momento Mori series. It’s a clever, tightly plotted mystery featuring one of the most unusual protagonists I’ve ever come across; I loved the story when I read it a few months back and enjoyed it all over again in audio – where there’s the added goodness of a wonderfully intelligent and switched-on performance from Kale Williams.
Detective Everett Larkin of the Cold Case Squad is called to Madison Square Park, where a storm has uprooted an old tree – beneath which lies a wooden crate containing human remains. These are obviously not new, and initial observations by the CSI on scene suggest the body is that of a male in his twenties; most unusual, however, is what has also been found in the crate – a bronze casting of a face. A death mask. There’s no way of telling, at this stage, if the face the mask was made from belongs to the same set of remains or if it’s completely unrelated – and the CSI suggests Larkin should contact Ira Doyle, a detective with the police department’s small Forensic Artist Unit, for some expert advice.
You can read the rest of this review at AudioGals.