Hamilton’s gore-drenched debut urban fantasy thriller, his first in the Shattered Dogma series, pits a guilt-riddled detective against a vicious serial killer whose unstoppable spree threatens to drown the city of Silvergate in chaos. James Black is a good cop fighting to keep the streets safe, but the enigmatic Rune Killer has other plans. As the bodies stack, Black and his partner, Detective Jenna O’Malley, turn to the only clues they have: strange sigils carved into the victims that point to a connection with an ancient civilization devoted to a deadly form of justice that threatens everything Black believes in.

Readers will squirm at the sickly-inventive means by which the Rune Killer dispatches victims, with scenes soaked in viscera and a palpable brutality. Black is an effective, if familiar, lead as the dour-yet-determined noir detective, whose visits with his institutionalized brother, Samuel, lend a tender vulnerability to his otherwise monochromatic portrait. Black’s partner, O’Malley, alongside their fellow detectives Jones and Ramirez, however, rarely escape the gravity of Black’s ethos, operating more as thematic enactments of duty and struggle than fully relatable characters. The plot’s meditations on the restless battle of good vs evil paints an appropriately taxing picture of Black, though some readers may lose interest in the drawn-out proceedings by the novel’s end.

Hamilton flourishes when envisioning gruesome contraptions and building a nihilistic, brooding framework. The Rune Killer’s reverence for the ancient Ordo Iustitiae and supernatural flourishes adds welcome texture to familiar roads, though the book’s procedural aspects are hindered by overly convenient staging, sacrificing suspense at times while lessening reader commitment to Black and his cohort of beleaguered but unwavering cops. Still, there’s plenty of potential brimming in this moody, violent urban thriller, where detectives are inherently good and the enemy is a viciously satisfying rendering of “evil in its purest incarnation.”

Takeaway: Gruesome noir detective story that flirts with supernatural elements.

Comparable Titles: C.L. Thomas’s The Hollow, John Connolly’s The Black Angel.

Production grades
Cover: A
Design and typography: B+
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: B-
Marketing copy: A