Shatter the Bones

Starred review from January 1, 2013
MacBride's seventh Logan McRae novel may be the most harrowing yetand that's saying something. The Aberdeen, Scotland, police detective finds himself working two kidnapping cases that couldn't be more different. In the first, a mother-daughter singing duo, made famous on the TV show Britain's Next Big Star, is being held for ransom with the little girl's toes offered up as proof of their abductors' seriousness. In the other, a junkie has gone missing, presumably due to her boyfriend's role in a drug deal. If Dark Blood (2011) suffered from slackness, then this installment finds MacBride roaring back to form. The crimes are breathtakingly awful, the pacing is breakneck, and the stakes are higher than ever. Indeed, when fallout from his actions lands close to home, McRae finds himself wracked by guilt far worse than his many physical wounds. Few writers can blend bantering humor with gut-wrenching violence without it feeling cheap. MacBride entertains while still offering food for thought about what we consume as entertainment: Why does the public weep for one missing mother, who may be a fame-hungry monster, while not caring about another, who may be a victim of circumstances? There's little comfort in this bleak ending, but still: brilliant. Bloody. Brilliant.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)