OHIO 10

In Smith’s novel, a ragtag group of detectives hunts down murderers in Ohio’s capital.

Columbus, Ohio, isn’t a huge city, but it’s home to its fair share of homicides, and the officers of the Columbus Police Department have their work cut out for them. Detective Cole Kennedy is cool and calm in most situations, although his wandering eye for women sometimes distracts him from the cases at hand. He’s temperamentally the opposite of his prickly partner, Everett Clark, a military veteran whose wife just left him for refusing to prioritize his family over the job. The two seasoned detectives are responsible for mentoring the next generation: Travis White, a by-the-book rookie from a police-skeptical family, and Vania Aguilar, a promising new academy graduate from an old policing dynasty. The four frequently butt heads as they set out to solve a series of crimes, each of which is trickier than it initially appears: Two people who used to be a couple are found murdered in separate locations; a trans woman is found dead in her garage; and two other killings are staged to look like drug overdoses and are possibly connected to a kidnapped teenager. In addition, there’s a serial killer stalking victims on Interstate 71. This episodic work feels more like a series of short stories than a novel, with most chapters dealing with a discrete case while expanding the main characters’ backstories. Smith’s prose is awkward at times, but he’s got a good sense of plot and pacing, and scenes often crackle with urgency: “Now, he was going to be sitting across from a stone-cold murderer.” The main characters are all very familiar types, as are the supporting cast members, including a coroner whose bedside manner is as cold as his patients and an irreverent medical examiner who cracks jokes at crime scenes. Still, fans of procedurals will enjoy this novel’s complicated relationships, false leads, and personal vendettas.

An engaging, if somewhat by-the-numbers, crime tale.