The Crypt Thief

March 11, 2013
Two young lovers make the fatal mistake of sneaking into Paris’s Père Lachaise Cemetery the same night as a bone-stealing psychopath, in Pryor’s propulsive second novel starring affable former FBI profiler Hugo Marston (after 2012’s The Bookseller). Because one victim is a U.S. senator’s son, the potentially explosive case lands in the laps of Hugo, now the U.S. embassy’s security chief, and his friend Tom Green, a semiretired CIA spook, at a time when their relationship is strained by Tom’s alcoholism. And if they have any hope of stopping—and surviving—the stone-cold killer dubbed the Scarab by Hugo, because of the glass beetle charms he leaves at each ransacked grave, they will both need to be at the top of their game. The engaging characters sweep readers into a suspenseful chase from Pigalle to the Pyrenées, marred only by the Scarab’s overkill as he pursues his Grand Guignol fantasy of revenge, death, and reincarnation. Agent: Ann Collette, Rees Literary Agency.