HALO AROUND THE MOON

In this thriller, a Los Angeles Police Department detective and a university professor find themselves drawn into a conspiracy-laced series of murders.

Detective Jack Bratton’s latest case involves a body in a wood chipper. A “blood-coated splinter” gives him good reason to consult with his friend Marcus Melter, a UCLA botany professor. Unexpectedly, the investigation leads both men to a second corpse, which has ties to a chemical manufacturing company. As Jack tries piecing together the evidence, someone close to the professor winds up as a murder victim. Jack and Marcus, convinced all these homicides are connected, may have stumbled on a full-blown conspiracy. This puts the two friends in peril, as someone apparently believes they know too much. Meanwhile, various subplots, with settings ranging from the early 20th century to the present day, appear throughout the book. Most of them follow the main characters’ grandparents and fathers as their activities gradually lead them to California. Though not every subplot is immediately relevant, they all somehow link to the protagonists by the end. Ritter’s taut murder mystery doubles as a smart, engaging story of causal effect. For example, seemingly trivial things, like earthworm migration in the United States and the invention of barbed wire, sometimes become the narrative focus. But these ultimately affect significant events in the characters’ lives in surprising ways. Despite the story jumping around in different time periods and countries (for example, 1941 Denmark), Ritter makes each transition unambiguous. And while it’s a delightful narrative approach, the plot stays decidedly grim; vicious assaults and deaths come at the hands of such violent characters as an Alcatraz escapee. The author’s crisp prose shines, even in describing a hit-and-run accident: “As his sausage-like fingers clawed at the floor, he heard a terrible noise, a thud, a pop, the ring of metal, and a crumbling sound as something soft rolled under his car.”

This invigorating mystery explores the endless ways that history shapes lives.