GAME OF TWINS

A series of evil murders haunt a longtime FBI agent in this eerie prequel.

Ranseen provides background for readers of author Ranseen’s Game of Twins three-volume series. The good news is that it isn’t necessary to have read the later books in the series to enjoy this one; it uses a primarily separate cast and is set about 60 years in the past. The titular character is FBI Special Agent Derbert Hinke, who in 1950 is tasked by J. Edgar Hoover to investigate the gruesome deaths of twins in New Canaan, Connecticut. Communist banners were left with the girls’ bodies, and Hoover, who saw the world through red-colored glasses, wants Derbert to find the Commie connection. Derbert was plucked from obscurity by Helen Gandy, Hoover’s longtime secretary, who becomes Derbert’s older lover. Derbert determines there’s something more vile than Communism behind the ritualistic murders. But that case goes cold. It flares back up in 1973 and 1974 when the aging Derbert discovers disappearances of twins in Alabama and Georgia (Ranseen makes that jump decades into the future without disrupting the narrative). Derbert also learns that he’s been playing a rigged game that he wasn’t ever meant to win. Sadly, that’s the built-in disappointment of this installment. Since the Game of Twins is still being played in the later two thrillers, it’s obvious that Derbert was destined to lose, and kudos to Ranseen for defying reader expectations for his lead. Ranseen does a masterful job of painting fully realized settings, whether that’s snobbish Connecticut during the Red Scare or the rural South just after desegregation. He also skillfully introduces characters with connections to the series’ later volumes. The author’s biggest success is making the reader want to pick up the other two books in his series to see if good ever triumphs in the game.

A moody, grisly thriller that supplies a nuanced cast and unresolved mysteries.