Early in Thriller Award-finalist Cole's fevered sequel to 2017's Ragdoll, Det. Chief Insp. Emily Baxter, of London's New Scotland Yard, is visited by CIA agent Damien Rouche and FBI agent Elliot Curtis. They think she might be interested in a recent murder at the Brooklyn Bridge that could be the work of someone copying the notorious serial killer Lethaniel "Ragdoll" Masse, whom she help put behind bars. Baxter protests that she can be of no help in what to her is a clearly unrelated case on the other side of the world, but in the end, of course, she travels to New York, where she joins a team of investigators who get on the trail of copycat killers who have the word puppet carved into their chests. Cole doesn't hesitate to go over the top, both in terms of the killings and the dialogue (at one point Rouche asks, "How do you catch a killer who's already dead?"). But this is a book that wears its intentions on its sleeve, and readers going in expecting even more gruesome thrills than Ragdoll will be satisfied. Agents: Esther Newberg and Zoe Sandler, ICM. (July) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Delightfully abrasive Metropolitan Police detective Emily Baxter returns (after Ragdoll, 2017), this time assisting an NYPD/FBI/CIA task force that's hunting a Ragdoll copycat killer in New York. Their quarry's first victim shares the name William Fawkes with Baxter's former partner; fittingly, the word BAIT is gouged into his chest. Task-force investigators have come to the UK to question Lethaniel Masse (the convicted Ragdoll killer), but at the prison, they find only his freshly murdered body, also marked as BAIT. His killer, branded with the word PUPPET, committed suicide. Narrowly escaping the ensuing prison riot, Baxter and company head back to NYC, where their killer unleashes a wave of grotesquely imaginative BAIT and PUPPET murders, each designed to lure them into a deadly trap. Making use of cutting (and quite humorous) wit and unofficial backup from her Ragdoll teammate, Alex Edmunds, Baxter outmaneuvers backstabbing brass and secretive partners, determined to survive another battle with a serial killer. A strong follow-up to Ragdoll and a winning recommendation for fans of Carol O'Connell's Mallory series.--Tran, Christine Copyright 2018 Booklist

Reluctantly assigned to a joint task force with the FBI and CIA, a British detective must relive the worst case of her career as a copycat killer appears determined to match the prior perp's carnage on both sides of the pond.In this jumbled, excessively violent follow-up to Ragdoll, (2017), DCI Emily Baxter, still smarting from her physical and emotional wounds, wants nothing more to do with the Ragdoll case, allegedly linked to her friend and fellow cop William Fawkes, who's disappeared. But she's given little choice when her boss assigns her to assist FBI Special Agent Elliot Curtis and CIA Special Agent Damien Rouche on a multinational operation after a corpse is found strung up on the Brooklyn Bridge that bears a striking resemblance to the Ragdoll victims. Baxter travels with Curtis and Rouche to New York, where they find that the similarities to the Ragdoll case are superficial and they're looking for someone with a greater reach. Baxter, perpetually the petulant child of the three, seems to want only to drink away her miseries back in London, while Rouche and Curtis have their own agendas. Bodies begin to pile upsome with "bait" and some with "puppet" carved into their chestsand acts of domestic terrorism, from a church massacre to a possible attack on a London Tube station, increase, with the investigators no closer to catching the person, or group, responsible. Cole quickly deflates any suspense he may have built up by the sheer number of grisly incidents he crams into the narrative, making the reader numb or, worse, bored by the loss of life. Even the denouement feels as staged as one of the kills, constructed more to draw attention to the carnage than the story.Forgettable characters slogging, sometimes literally, through a pile of corpses makes for dull reading, even for readers looking for a bloody thrill. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.