Jigsaw Man - Hardcover

Elena Forbes is the author of the Mark Tartaglia mystery series. The first novel in the series, Die with Me, was a finalist for the Crime Writers' Association John Creasey New Blood Dagger; and the second novel, Our Lady of Pain, was a Globe and Mail Top 10 Crime Book and a National Post pick for Best Crime Fiction. She lives in London, England, with her husband and children.

Forbes (Die with Me) begins the fourth Det. Insp. Mark Tartagli mystery early one morning when a fellow detective awakens Mark, who's still hungover, and sends him to a murder scene at a hotel in London's West End—the same hotel Mark left only hours before, following a tryst with a woman he met there that night. His relief that the victim was not that same woman quickly turns to horror when he realizes that the victim is the sister of a former colleague of his, Samantha Donovan. Judged to be too close to the case, Mark is instead assigned to investigate the case of a body found burned in the trunk of a car, which turns out to be parts of four different bodies sewn together. Mark continues to unofficially investigate the murder of Samantha's sister, but Forbes does not handle the split focus between the two cases well, and leaves the titular "jigsaw" murder underdeveloped. The introduction of several characters in quick succession makes this mystery hard to follow at times. Readers familiar with characters from previous books in the series will be better equipped, particularly with more insight into the ambiguous relationship between Samantha and the unapologetically single Mark. Agent: Sarah Lutyens, Lutyens and Rubinstein (U.K.). (Feb.)\n