THE CUTTING

A serial killer and his support team roam the East Coast from Florida to Maine.

A pretty blond high-school girl, a soccer star, is found in a vacant lot a week after she’s been raped and killed. Another blonde, a jogger, goes missing. Tying the cases together is ex–New York homicide cop Michael McCabe, now divorced, bringing up a 13-year-old daughter with help from his girlfriend Kyra, and relocated to Portland, where he heads the city’s Crimes Against People unit. A fact the media are unaware of, the surgical removal of the soccer player’s heart, leads the cops to interview medical personnel and focus on transplant specialist Philip Spencer. Spencer offers an alibi, a night at home with his wife Hattie, but instead of backing him up, she says she was visiting family in Blue Hill. Once the autopsy indicates that a week had passed between the victim’s capture and death, the race is on to find the second victim before the deadline. With help from a guilt-ridden Frenchwoman, McCabe and his team zero in on a team of illegal operators who’ve been harvesting hearts up and down the Eastern Seaboard for profit and sexual thrills. There’ll be yet more fatalities before McCabe can relax and worry about less lethal matters, like the reappearance of his ex in his daughter’s life.

Former adman Hayman’s debut piles on the gore and sexual sleaze, but provides a nice guy hero in McCabe.