The Slaughter Man: A Novel

Max Wolfe is back—the two-fisted homicide detective with a small daughter and dog waiting for him at home, and a crazed serial killer waiting for him somewhere out in the pitiless London streets.

On New Year's Day, a wealthy family is found slaughtered inside their exclusive gated community, their youngest child stolen away. The murder weapon—a gun used to stun cattle before they are butchered—leads Max to a dusty corner of Scotland Yard's Black Museum devoted to a mass murderer who, thirty years ago, was known as The Slaughter Man. But The Slaughter Man has done his time and is now old and dying. Is he really back in the killing game? And was the slaughter of a happy family a mindless killing spree, or a grotesque homage by a copycat killer, or a contract hit designed to frame a dying man? Max desperately needs to find the missing child and stop the killer before he destroys another innocent family—or finds his way to Detective Wolfe's own front door.

"Haunting and moving aren't words usually used to describe blood-soaked tales of madness and murder . . . But those words apply here because Parson's novel has startling emotional power, the result of brooding poetry gliding across a propulsive narrative . . . A remarkable novel on multiple levels." — Booklist (starred review)

"Absorbing . . . The writing is top-notch." — Kirkus Reviews