The Fifth to Die

Detective Sam Porter has been taken off the search for Anson Bishop, the Four Monkey Killer, when his Chicago Metro team is handed an impossible puzzle. Ella Reynolds, missing for three weeks, is found under the ice of Jackson Park Lagoon, which froze months before she vanished.

The dead girl wears the clothes of another girl who has been missing for less than two days. Clair Norton and Nash take on the developing investigation while the clock runs on the second girl.

Porter cannot let Bishop go. He believes the way to find the killer is to find his mother, and a single grainy photograph leads him out of Chicago to New Orleans. What he uncovers there is a past darker than he expected, and he comes to see the mother as the greater horror.

When the captain learns what Porter has been doing, he is suspended, and his partners are left to chase the new killer without him.

This is the sequel to The Fourth Monkey. Short chapters switch between Porter's obsession, Clair's case and the account of a girl already in the killer's hands. The threads tighten toward a cliffhanger that sets up the rest of the trilogy.