A murderer and a troubled cop are on the loose in Rosenberg’s debut police procedural/psychological thriller.

A serial killer known as “the Slasher” is murdering young women, and police detective Ash Aiken is on the case. He’s back on the job after the apparent disappearance of his own family, and his fellow cops lack faith in his sanity and efficacy—and for good reason, as he suffers from delusions. Meanwhile, psychiatrist Martine Caveau faces a moral dilemma: She suspects that her patient Louie Freckles is the Slasher, but due to professional ethics, she can’t discuss it with anyone. Freckles asks Caveau for an introduction to another patient, a troubled young woman whom he later kidnaps. Freckles also turns a chance meeting with a misogynistic college student into an opportunity to pin the murders on someone else. A game of cat and mouse between cops and killer ensues but ends too soon, leading to an unsurprising finale. Overall, however, Rosenberg largely manages to keep the complex plot cohesive. The action moves quickly, and the prose is confident, if sometimes overwritten. At its best, it musters brevity and grit, as when Aiken thinks about his missing family, musing that “the streets had eaten them.” Some characters’ interior monologues are also disturbing and creepy. However, the book might have benefited from removing some characters and situations, such as a street gang intent on exacting revenge, so that there might have been room to clarify the motivations of others more essential to the plot. Also, the Dickensian character names (“Lizzie Januss,” “Father Goldhush”) aren’t revelatory, and the device of having characters breaking into song, either in real life or in their imaginations, is superfluous.

A thriller with abundant style, but a stronger edit might have better revealed it.