The Hangman's Song by James Oswald
Wednesday, January 7, 2015 at 7:53AM 
Published by Mariner Books on January 6, 2015
DI Tony McLean has been assigned to the Sex Crimes Unit by the new boss he loathes, but he can't stay away from his old job at Homicide. The two jobs intersect when, after Tony stumbles upon a group of prostitutes who were being trafficked out of Scotland (a reverse of the usual route), the man one of the women identified as her pimp is found dead in an alley. McLean is unhappy with the way the Sex Crimes Unit responds to pimps and prostitutes. As usual, McLean's bosses are unhappy that he won't shut up and go along with the program.
Also to the displeasure of his superiors, McLean investigates two suicides by hanging that appear to be coincidentally similar -- too coincidental, his instincts tell him. McLean's boss doesn't want to add two more corpses to the homicide unit's list of unsolved crimes and is infuriated by McLean's refusal to report the deaths as suicides, even after more hangings are discovered.
McLean's life is complicated by his former lover Emma Baird, who was in a coma at the end of The Book of Souls. Emma is awake but far from recovered, prompting McLean to hire a caretaker and install them both in his house. Emma remembers nothing of her life after her teenage years. One theory that accounts for Emma's memory loss has to do with her soul, a part of which may have been taken from her. That's a bit too supernatural for the rational McLean, who finds it difficult to accept the information he is given by a transvestite medium, despite their friendship.
The supernatural taint to the Emma Baird plot thread didn't sit well with me. It seems out of place and unnecessary in what is essentially a police procedural. The "suicide murders" thread is better but the culprit is surprisingly obvious and no satisfying explanation of the culprit's method or motive is ever provided. The remaining thread, involving the prostitutes and a crooked cop, is the strongest. All three threads weave together in a way that is improbable, but that has become the convention in modern thrillers. As always, I enjoyed the quality of James Oswald's writing and the depth of his characters. The story Oswald tells, however, is weaker than earlier installments in the series.
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