This is book 2 of the "Mac McRyan" series.

This note contains spoilers for the book.

Origin story for McRyan—his first big case.

I really like the plotting here. There are 4 or 5 fairly major revelations, most fairly surprising, considerably deeper than most plots. The bad guys are unreasonably good, but the origin story reasonably accounts for that.

I particularly like the insight that one of the apparent victims of the serial killer, and it "happened" to be the one who didn't fit the profile of the other victims, didn't appear in the otherwise complete and highly detailed murder wall that the killer made for himself. Then he was killed, by an expert, before he could be questioned about this. That turned the cops on to something being wrong.

And, eventually, they find video of the reporter being murdered, not by the senator but by the chief of security of PTA, who just happens to be ex-CIA.