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The title THE CORPSE HAD A FAMILIAR FACE is interchangeable with its author, Edna Buchanan. Buchanan became a household name as a result of that work, and despite subsequently publishing a succession of well-written and imaginative crime novels, CORPSE remains her best-known work. That may change with the publication of COLD CASE SQUAD.
COLD CASE SQUAD begins with two prologues, both of them chronicling apparently unrelated incidents taking place in Miami within 24 hours of each other in June 1992. One is a double murder that takes place in a striptease establishment; the other is an explosion and fire that takes the life of a father of three. One act is deliberate, the other an apparent accident. The murders go unsolved; for the survivors of the explosion, life goes on.
The meat of the book begins with Sergeant Craig Burch of the Miami Police Department's Cold Case Squad taking a complaint from a woman who believes that she has been seeing her ex-husband in several places. The problem is that her ex-husband died twelve years previously in an explosion. It does not seem like a matter that the Cold Case Squad should be dealing with --- their mission concerns old murder cases that have not been solved --- and, indeed, Burch is about to send the woman on her way when his boss, Lieutenant K.C. Riley, inexplicably orders the squad to investigate the matter. The team slowly but methodically begins to detect a link between the apparently unrelated murders and explosion that took place in June 1992, and the woman's complaint.
Buchanan does a masterful job here, painstakingly establishing the connection point by point while making the reader care about the detectives involved. Burch, in particular, is dealing with his estranged wife, who is harassing him at the station, and elsewhere. Buchanan somehow manages to elicit some sympathy for the wife, even while painting her as a world-class pain. At the same time, Detective Sam Stone of the Squad has discovered an apparent link between a series of murders spanning decades and occurring throughout the country, including Miami, little suspecting that his investigation will put a loved one directly into the target of the killer. Buchanan ratchets up the suspense throughout the story, switching points of view among several individuals and cases, maintaining momentum without confusing the reader, while heading toward a cataclysmic ending.
COLD CASE SQUAD may well be Buchanan's best work to date. This is the first title in a new series. Given that advances in forensic science are enabling police departments to reopen investigations into previously unsolvable murders, there should be interest in this series, as well as renewed, and well-deserved, attention to Buchanan. Highly recommended.
--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
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