THE RIVER KILLINGS

Multiple murders, stalkers, revenge killings—it’s all in a day’s work for Jones’s art-therapist heroine.

Zoe Hayes (The Nanny Murders, 2005, etc.) and her friend, defense lawyer Susan Cummings, are rowing on the Schuylkill River when a bunch of floating corpses turns the peaceful night into a nightmare. They’re horrified to learn that the 19 Asian women were imported as slaves and had died because they were left in shackles in an airless truck. Zoe’s boyfriend, police detective Nick Stiles, is put on the case along with the FBI. Interrogated by a threatening Fed and then warned by two disguised strangers that they may be in trouble with the slave cartel, Zoe and Susan become concerned for their safety and that of Zoe’s adopted daughter Molly, a possible witness. Zoe’s relationship with Nick is tenuous. When his first wife was shot, he was suspected but never charged. Now he’s getting strange e-mails from his ex-sister-in-law, recently released from prison and still obsessed with him. When Nick stalks out after an argument and doesn’t return, Zoe follows his trail out on the river and finds Nick wounded and her rowing coach shot dead. She’ll barely escape death herself before the nasty case and her love life are brought to a satisfactory conclusion.

Although Zoe and Nick and their circle of friends are well-drawn, the plot sprawls.