James Nicoll Reviews

2021’s Madison Square Murders is the first book in C. S. Poe’s Memento Mori police procedural series.

A storm upending a tree in New York City’s Madison Square Park isn’t all that unusual. What is unusual is that the upended tree reveals interred human remains, accompanied by a death mask. Clearly, this is a job for the Cold Case Squad. Specifically, Everett Larkin.

Larkin brings to the job impressive deductive skills and nigh-superhuman recall. This is enough to protect his job, if not earn the respect of jealous and wildly homophobic NYPD officers.

While the evidence on hand is skimpy, it could be worse. Larkin has human remains, the mask, and the tree itself. The tree was planted twenty-two years ago. Creating the mask required some uncommon skills. The bones prove that the dead man was murdered. The face that once was on the skull can be reconstructed… but for that, Larkin needs assistance from Forensic Artists Unit.

Reaching out to the Forensic Artists Unit puts Larkin in contact with Detective Ira Doyle. Doyle immediately attaches himself to the case. While Doyle’s skills are useful, Larkin is somewhat uncomfortable with ingoing contact with the unconventional Doyle, if only because Larkin’s attraction to Doyle spotlights just how shaky Larkin’s marriage to husband Noah could be.

The victim is one Andrew Gorman, whose roommate Jessica Lopez reported him missing two decades before. In the grand tradition of policing, the NYPD completely dropped the ball on the case, perhaps due to sloth or perhaps because officers at the time didn’t count crimes against gay people as crimes. Gorman’s murder is just one of a series of killings that in retrospect were clearly connected.

Solving a cold case like Gorman’s murder might seem impossible. However, Larkin and Doyle get an unexpected clue. No sooner do they interview Lopez than her building super, Ricky Goulding tries to murder Lopez. When arrested, Goulding’s rants strongly support the hypothesis that he is the serial killer.

It’s a swift and tidy resolution to the case. Larkin doesn’t think it’s the complete story. Larkin is right.

I know I mention this in the book links but it bears pre-peating: other authors could learn valuable lessons about useful self-promotion from Poe’s website. It would be nice if they replaced Twitter with Bluesky, but otherwise full marks.

I know you probably don’t want to hear this, but… workplace romances are almost always a terrible idea. That goes double if one or more of the participants are married. Yeah, the Larkin-Noah marriage is clearly as doomed as Michael Flatley wearing heavy boots and performing Riverdance in a minefield, but it’s technically not dead yet… or at least it is still twitching a bit.

The memory superpower comes with some serious drawbacks, not least of which is that being able to remember every detail of a day a decade ago means Larkin’s short-term memory is terrible. This in turn means he forgets everyday obligations, which doesn’t help the situation with Noah.

Part of the reason the Cold Case Squad is unpopular (as is the rest of the NYPD) is that success is very likely to be a matter of doing the job some cop who may well still be employed by the NYPD could not be bothered to do years ago. In this particular case, a modicum of effort on the part of the NYPD could have prevented several murders. However, as the cases were NHI cases, no such effort was invested. I too am reminded of the 2010 – 2017 Toronto serial homicides. Indeed, if Canada weren’t such an obscure northern outlier, I’d wonder if the author had that specific case in mind.

If I seem a bit cool about this book, it’s because I’m not nearly as keen on police procedurals as I used to be. On the plus side, this isn’t another copaganda police procedural, in which the heroic detectives of a flawless police department invest implausible money and time tracking down the villain. The plot is driven by the fact the NYPD detectives are often lazy and unobservant. The novel and its characters are competently delivered, just not what I was looking for at this particular moment.

Madison Square Murders is available here (Amazon US), here (Amazon Canada), here (Amazon UK), here (Apple Books), here (Barnes & Noble), here (Chapters-Indigo), here (Words Worth Books) and at a plethora of other sources. I am impressed by the homework the author has put into making it easy for readers to buy their book.