Peter May, Poisoned Pen Press

His victims are young, beautiful, and viciously mutilated. He calls himself the Beijing Ripper. The media and terror-stricken public are demanding the killer's arrest, and Li Yan, the head of Beijing's serious crime squad, has been put in the spotlight. American pathologist Margaret Campbell is asked to perform an autopsy on one of the victims, and her results send shockwaves through the investigation. Then Li begins receiving personal letters from the killer, and his life and career start falling apart. The need to uncover the Ripper's identity becomes paramount if he is to save himself and his family.Peter May's terrifying sixth China thriller pits Li Yan and Margaret Campbell against an unscrupulous foe who could prove to be their deadliest enemy yet.

A top Chinese swimmer kills himself on the eve of an international event, shattering his country's hopes of victory against the Americans. An Olympic weightlifter dies in the arms of his Beijing mistress, a scandal to be hushed up at the highest level. These two deaths could be a tragic coincidenceor something more sinister.When Beijing detective Li Yan discovers that these are not the first of China's athletes to die, he brings American pathologist Margaret Campbell out of retirement to find out if natural causes may be concealing very unnatural deaths.The key to the case lies with a champion runner, the only member of the athletics team prepared to talk. But when the runner disappears, time starts to run out for Li Yan to catch the killer.

What happened to Jacques Gaillard? The brilliant teacher at the cole Nationale d'Administration, who trained some of France's best and brightest as future prime ministers and presidents, vanished ten years ago, presumably from Paris. This ten-year-old mystery inspires a betone that Enzo Macleod, a biologist teaching in Toulouse, France, instead of pursuing a brilliant career in forensics back home in Scotland, can ill afford to lose. The wager is that Enzo can find out what happened to Jacques Gaillard by applying new science to a cold case.Enzo goes to Paris to meet journalist Roger Raffin, the author of a book on seven celebrated unsolved murders, the assumption being that Gaillard is dead. He needs Raffin's notes, and armed with these, he begins his quest. It quickly has him touring landmarks such as the Paris catacombs and a chteau in Champagne, digging up relics and bones. Then Enzo finds the actual head of Jacques Gaillard. The artifacts buried with the skull set him to interpreting the clues they provide and following in someone's footstepsmaybe more than one someoneseeking the rest of Gaillard's remains and reviewing some ancient and recent history. As with any quest, it's as much discovery as detection, and Enzo, despite all his missteps, proves to be an ace investigator, scientific and intuitive, who definitely meets his goals.

Some cases are better left swept under the rug...Forensics ace Enzo Macleod, a Scot who's been in France for many years, has rashly boasted he could solve seven classic cold cases written up in a bestselling book. He successfully solved the first three and now is facing the fourth. A promise made to a dying man leads Macleod to the man's study, which has been preserved for nearly twenty years by his heir. The dead man had left several clues there designed to reveal his killer's identity to his son, but, ironically, the son died soon after the father. The case takes Enzo to a tiny island off the coast of Brittany in France, where he must confront the hostility of locals who have no desire to see the infamous murder back in the headlines. An attractive widow, a man charged but acquitted of the murder, a crime scene frozen in time, and a collection of impenetrable messages make this one of Macleod's most difficult cases.

Beijing detective Li Yan, now based at the Chinese embassy in Washington, is dispatched to find out how his fellow countrymen died in a sealed refrigeration unit in southern Texas. Then he finds himself face-to-face with American pathologist Margaret Campbell, the woman who walked out of China, and his life, to return to the US.Tasked to work together again to investigate the $100 million trade in illegal Chinese immigrants that led to the tragedy in Texas, they discover that the immigrants were unwitting carriers of a deadly cargo. And still wrestling with the demons of their pasts, Li and Margaret find themselves racing against time to defuse a biological time-bomb that threatens to wipe out not only their future, but that of humankind.