The Man Made of Smoke

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY MAR 31, 2025

North's rollicking latest (after The Angel Maker) centers on a serial killer who targets children. When Daniel Garvie was 12, he narrowly escaped the notorious Pied Piper killer at a highway rest stop before encountering a boy who'd soon become one of the Piper's many victims. Decades later, Daniel has forged a career in criminal psychology and remains obsessed with the case. It also became an object of fascination for Daniel's policeman father, John, who spent much of his retirement trying to crack it. When Daniel learns that John has died by suicide, he returns to the unnamed island where he grew up to follow breadcrumbs his father left behind—both about his own suicide and about a new string of murders that suggest the Piper may have reemerged. As Daniel pieces together John's clues, he learns that all of the recent victims were present at the same rest stop where he fled the killer. North toggles smoothly between Daniel's present-day inquiry, John's sleuthing in the past, and the final days of a young boy named James. Fans of Thomas Harris will be creeped out by North's hair-raising antagonist and gripped by the plot's dual investigations. This is a winner.