THE LAST COMMANDMENT

A serial killer seems to be taking his cues from Agatha Christie and Ellery Queen.

The first victim is a visiting Oxford don, the second an East End sculptor, the third a has-been rocker. They seem to have nothing in common except for the successive Roman numerals carved into their foreheads. Commander Austin Grant of Scotland Yard can’t imagine what could possibly link them all until his brother, Oxford philosophy professor Everett Grant, points out to him over a game of chess that each victim had notably broken one of the Ten Commandments. Since the most likely candidates for the role of fourth victim are priests who are working on the Lord’s Day, Grant sends out a veiled nationwide warning that improbably shuts down myriad houses of worship, but it does no good; the killer simply hops the pond and executes a priest inside St. Patrick’s Cathedral. High-tailing it stateside after his quarry, Grant makes contact with NYPD Detective John Frankel and Rachel Grant, the journalist daughter who’s been estranged from him ever since her mother’s death from cancer. Shepherd isn’t afraid of clichés, and the obsessively choreographed murders are complemented by an interfering reporter, the detective’s buried family secret, his looming retirement on New Year’s Day, true love blossoming in the unlikeliest places, and the death of whichever suspect seems the most obvious candidate for the role of “the Commandment killer” on a given day. Readers may be surprised early on, but many of them will figure out whodunit well before Grant.

A fast-paced tale that weds its golden-age homage to some serious violence. Sinners beware.