Head Cases

In Jacksonville, a fringe FBI task force called the Patterns and Recognition Unit collects brilliant agents who have been sidelined for their mistakes and their inability to fit in. Led by an analytical genius who reads codes and puzzles better than he reads people, the unit usually works cold data rather than live cases. That changes when DNA recovered from a fresh murder victim links back to a serial killer long believed dead. As more bodies appear, the team realizes the killer is constructing elaborate riddles aimed directly at their leader, daring him to keep pace. The deeper they dig, the clearer it becomes that the murderer is hunting other killers and the people who helped them escape justice, forcing the investigators to weigh vengeance against the rule of law. Balancing tense procedural detail with the prickly dynamics of a team of misfits, the story moves quickly between coded clues, mounting danger, and the personal blind spots that make its hero both formidable and vulnerable. It opens a new series built around an unusual investigator whose gift for patterns may be the only thing standing between the city and a killer who treats murder as a game.