THE BONES At POINT NO POINT: A Thomas Austin Crime Thriller Book 1 by D.D. Black – Mystery, Serial Killer Thriller, Pacific Northwest Fiction

The Bones at Point no Point, by D.D. Black, begins with a crime so distinctive that it could only have been committed by one person.

A festive Christmas bag, decorated with cheerful season’s trinkets, brings much darker tidings within. Bones. Small gleaming bones, tiny like those of a baby, including a skull. And they’re engraved with the words of a loving poem.

But that one possible suspect is safely locked up in prison 3,000 miles away. A copycat murder seems likely, but one with details only the convict herself could know.

Thomas Austin is a retired New York City cop who now lives in Washington State’s Puget Sound, running a combination general store, café, and bait shop. But even with the great distance, he’s haunted by one particular case.

The Holiday Baby Butcher, serial murderer Lorraine D’Antonia, remains in his mind. It wasn’t enough that Austin had to face the horror of her crimes. He also had to deal with the media circus that surrounded them.

He believes he can put the case behind him until a local police officer calls him about the new case, a duplicate down to the smallest details, that has just been committed locally.

At first, he tries to stay as far away from the crime as possible. But a nosy reporter bringing unwanted publicity to the case and Austin personally, and reports of a second infant abducted from a local hospital, force him to join the investigation.

As the local community shuts down for the Christmas season, Austin and a crew of local police officers begin a frantic search to find the second infant in time, and struggle to understand how this new killer committed such a perfect recreation of the old Butcher murders.

Throughout the story, Austin shows himself to be an engaging, complex character.

Austin’s reluctance and pained memories of New York– including his own wife’s murder– contrast his smart, intuitive skills as a cop. He quickly parses out new situations, whether he is conducting a suspect’s interview or figuring out how a specific crime was committed, with only the barest clues.

The Bones at Point No Point is the first in a series of Thomas Austin books, making a strong first impression for the series.