DEAD, WITHOUT A STONE TO TELL IT

A Massachusetts state trooper and a forensic anthropologist combine their talents to solve a series of murders.

Trooper Leigh Abbot is an ambitious woman who’s not about to let harassment by her male colleagues slow her down. When a single bone is found sticking out of a beaver dam, Leigh talks reluctant professor Matt Lowell into taking a look at it. Once Matt and his team of graduate students, Kiko, Paul and Juka, conclude that the bone is from the recently buried body of a young person, they ask where the rest of the body might be. While searching a possible location, they come upon a disturbed grave. Back in the lab, however, Matt realizes that the bones do not match. Returning to the site, the crew stumbles upon the body of a freshly tortured and murdered young woman. Someone shoots at them, slightly wounding Matt, but before they can give chase, the shooter escapes in a motorboat hidden nearby in the thick reeds. Matt, a former marine medic in Afghanistan, is still struggling to deal with his memories of some very bad experiences, but he refuses to let his flashbacks stop him from investigating the crime, especially when more graves discovered nearby reveal that they’re dealing with a serial killer of young women. The only real clue is a strange design carved on the chests of the corpses, a sign they finally identify with a violent video game. As the team slowly discovers new evidence, its members become targets of the killer. This first in a planned series by a pair of scientific researchers is both exciting and informative, sure to please fans of forensic mysteries.