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Enzo MacLeod, a Scot teaching on a faculty at Cahors in southwest France, confidently bet that he could use his expertise to crack seven notorious murders described in a book on cold cases by Parisian journalist Roger Raffin. Enzo has in fact solved the first two crimes.

But the third is far from his mind right now: he’s just been diagnosed with a terminal illness, and he’s become the victim of someone who seems intent on destroying his credit and his relationships—and getting him arrested for murder. This is one instance where his Scottish stubbornness might pay off.

Having established a safe house to protect his loved ones, besieged now as it were, he sets to work. Are his personal woes somehow connected to the digging he’s done into the brutal murder of a rent boy in a Paris apartment sixteen years ago, as Raffin has described? What further remnants of evidence can he review—and can he stay alive long enough to catch the long-hidden killer? This is the third installment in the Enzo MacLeod series.

From Publishers WeeklyIn May's dark, intense third mystery to feature Scottish forensic scientist Enzo Macleod, Enzo takes on his third cold case described in a book by Parisian journalist Roger Raffin—the murder of a rent boy 16 years earlier—but Enzo's investigation runs into trouble after he's diagnosed with terminal cancer and he's framed for murder. Evidently, the rent boy's killer fears Enzo will solve the crime if he ever gets a chance. May makes the French settings sharply real, while creating a seething tangle of emotional conflicts between Enzo and the people around him. By novel's end, the overall plot, like the emotional relationships, isn't really settled, which may feel frustrating—or may hook readers into following the developments of an unusually compelling ongoing saga. Those already familiar with the previous two books in the series, Extraordinary People (2006) and The Critic (2007), will be at an advantage. (Nov.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From BooklistSomeone is going to great lengths to keep France-based forensic biologist Enzo Macleod from solving old murder cases with new science, as he did in the first two books in this series, Extraordinary People (2006) and The Critic (2007). His daughter, Kristy, is the target of a deadly explosion, the gym operated by daughter Sophie’s boyfriend is destroyed by arson, and his own life is turned upside down by a bogus diagnosis of terminal cancer and a scheme to frame him for killing a woman friend—all to keep him from finding the murderer of a Paris rent boy in 1992. As he attempts to protect his loved ones, Enzo embarks on a cat-and-mouse game with a menacing contract killer whose bizarre background adds twists to the plot. An action-packed climax on a dark mountainside in Auvergne ties up some loose ends but leaves open future threats to Enzo’s life. Family tensions (notably with Enzo’s two daughters from different marriages) and the occasional love interest add to the appeal of this canny crime solver. --Michele Leber