THE MIT MURDERS

A series of brutal murders in Boston tests the police and terrifies a book club.

As Bruneau’s debut mystery begins, Augusta “Gussie” Watkins races to her fifth-floor Cambridge apartment after work because she will host book club that night. Reaching her building, she takes the elevator, which suddenly stops between floors. A hatch atop the lift opens, and a hand emerges. That night, police find Gussie’s body with her eyes cut out. Near the body is scrawled the message, “Justice is blind.” Two days later, an elite runner is discovered dead in Boston Common with a knife in her back. A note nearby reads, “Justice is swift.” Chief Homicide Investigator Dimase Augustin realizes he’s hunting a serial killer, and he soon discovers both murdered women were in the same book club—a club that has more members, and they all are in danger. The killer, revealed early on, dishes out payback for an injustice he felt was dealt to him years ago when he was a university biology professor at MIT. Financed by “angel investors” in his work on a cure for Alzheimer’s, much of his research involved mice dissection. Did mutilating Gussie bother him? No, he “just thought of her as a big mouse.” For years he planned the murder while he played the long game in terms of going off the grid. Now, when Augustin suspects the former prof, he’s gone without a trace. Bruneau doesn’t rush the book club members’ backstories, likes, and routines. The reader feels they know these women, which raises the stakes. A believable time frame, intelligent dialogue, an abundance of twists, and escalation in the psychopath’s violence lead to quick page turns. Characters are intelligent, and a mix of races is represented. Augustin, a smart, albeit chain-smoking, middle-aged African American chief cop, deserves prominence in a sequel.

A sharp-witted detective hunts a psychopath schooled in murder; highly recommended.