Alan Hobbes was murdered in his bed. An older man, a retired philosophy professor, he was clearly close to the end of his life. But someone wasn’t willing to wait and stabbed him. Detectives Laurence Page and Caroline Pettifer took on the case, noting immediately how things just seemed off at the scene. First of all, why kill a man who is so close to death? And why was he living in a big house that was damaged so badly that the detectives can feel a slight breeze in the windowless room where Hobbes had lived, and died?

Across town, teacher Katie Shaw was upset with her husband Sam for letting their three-year-old daughter Siena sit in front of the television until she got home from work. Sam is a good man, maybe a little distracted that his music career isn’t exploding the way he’d hoped. But Katie doesn’t want Siena to fall through the cracks. It can happen. It almost happened to her brother.

They had just been teenagers when Katie had gotten home from school late because she’d been with Sam. She was supposed to watch her younger brother Sam get home from school okay, but he was fifteen, and she was starting to resent how her parents seemed to care more about him. So she spent one afternoon with Sam. And she came home to her neighborhood to find police cars, crime vans, and police tape. A man had jumped out of his car and attacked Chris, stabbing him and then trying to cut his face off.

The investigation into Alan Hobbes’ death raises as many questions as it answers. The man acted like he knew what was coming, but there was no way to know the future. But digging deeper, Detective Page starts to think that somehow his murder was related to the attack on Chris Shaw all those years ago and to a legendary serial killer who was known to tell the future.

Meanwhile, Katie gets a call from her mother letting her know that Chris has gone missing, and a report of a man watching the kids at Siena’s daycare makes her sense that her family is in danger. But will she be able to figure out what that threat is before it’s too late?

Alex North is back with The Angel Maker. The bestselling author of The Whisper Man and The Shadows has crafted a story that is mysterious and a little creepy but layered with so many characters, so many ideas, so many surprises, and a surprising amount of grace and compassion for a novel with so much violence.

I listened to the audio book of The Angel Maker, narrated by Rosalie Craig. This is not an easy book. There are a lot of characters and some gruesome descriptions of violence. But Craig handled it all with panache, seeming to understand what each character’s motivation is and imbues her performance with that layer of understanding.

I do not think that this book is for everyone. You have to take on some difficult criminals, some very dark characters and actions. I also struggled some with keeping the characters straight in my head (I thought that a print book or ebook might have made that easier). But this is a truly beautiful story that also brings forward the best that humanity has to offer, and as I got closer and closer to the end, and all the pieces of the jigsaw were falling into place, I just wanted to savor the masterful conclusion. I’ve read all of North’s books, and this was by far my favorite. I think I’m going to have to listen again, just to see again how perfect this story is.

A copy of the audio book for The Angel Maker was provided by Macmillan Audio through NetGalley, with many thanks.