Jeff Mariotte is a prolific writer and inveterate genre hopper, as the three books he has out this month suggest. One is a western novella, 'Billy the Kid: Cheat the Hangman', set towards the end of that outlaw's life. 'Beyond Thirty: A World Reborn' is an official sequel to the standalone Edgar Rice Burroughs science fiction novel from 1914 that was later retitled 'The Lost Continent'. 'Flesh of All Sorrows', on the other hand, is a bunch of things all on its own: it's a character drama maybe first and foremost, but it's also a police drama, a serial killer thriller, a romance and a very tough look at integrity under pressure.

By character drama, I don't just mean that Mariotte takes special care with his characters, Daniel Mansfield, Jr. most of all, but also his location, because Sossaman, Arizona is a character here too. It doesn't exist in our time but it used to, back in the early twentieth century. Nowadays, it's been absorbed into Gilbert and Queen Creek, down where Maricopa County becomes Pinal County. This Sossaman is a decent small town on the surface but it's had a history and that history is still being written. This novel doesn't just constitute a whole new chapter but rewrites old ones.

Danny is the new Chief of Police, the second youngest the town has ever seen. That record is held by his dad, also named Daniel Mansfield, who became a local celebrity after catching a serial killer known as the Bookbinder. The elder Mansfield is dead but the Bookbinder, Brian Quintana is still incarcerated in Florence at the age of seventy or so. When he takes office, Danny's task is to find his own place within this legacy. After all, there are a bunch of places in town named Mansfield in his family's honour, including Mansfield Park, which was not inspired by Jane Austen.

However, Sossaman has no interest in letting him settle in, immediately hurling two plot threads at him. The first affects the whole department and underlines just how much work Danny must do now that he's in charge. Greg Miller, who he believes he beat for the job because of his name, is a lot less stable, however decorated. He's stalking his ex-girlfriend, Kristin Darnell, even breaking into her house to leave flowers, as a romantic gesture before they inevitably get together again. Needless to say, she has a very different take on that and finds a new romantic connection to the chief.

Talking of men who have no idea what women want, the other strand involves Johnathan Ottilie, who enters the story by getting kicked out of school and stumbling onto a secret basement under the barn his grampa built in the back yard. He still lives in grampa's house, where his dad's slowly selling all his stuff. However, he finds different stuff, including a stash of photos in a buried trunk. They're a killer's photos. Lots of girls, both before and after, and it turns Johnathan on. We don't know at this point why he was expelled but it's surely something to do with Angela Tremayne, his crush at school. We get incel vibes from him immediately but it doesn't take long for serial killer vibes to manifest, too.

These two threads connect through Johnathan knowing Donnie Hewitt, the clerk at the Circle K where Greg Miller shoots a shoplifter dead, believing him to be charging at him with a knife. The fact that Herman Jackson doesn't have a knife is only the beginning of the fallout to this debacle and it escalates steadily but outrageously, with more fatal results. Mariotte gets lots of mileage out of this, growing it and feeding it into other strands of plot, eventually leading us to the point where Danny has to investigate the murders we always knew were coming while unsure as to who he can trust within his own department.

Throughout, Danny, who's been chief for about five minutes, is up against it on every front. Greg Miller is a black eye for the Sossaman PD in a growing number of ways. His new girlfriend is under serious threat. Jackson was from the Gila River reservation and protests erupt in Mansfield Park about racism and violence against Native Americans. And, when the killings begin, and appear to not only carry the very recognisable Bookbinder signature but include actual DNA evidence from victims back in the day, Danny is forced to dig up a past that nobody wants to see the light.

Given all that, it might seem surprising if I point out that Mariotte exhibits a lot of patience with this one. He writes carefully and thoughtfully, mirroring the actions of the new chief, and builds a seriously impressive lead character. Sure, he's good at his job. Sure, he's a decent human being. It means he's in a good position to do the right thing here, but it's no guarantee. He's faced with an awful lot of choices here that will upset people close to him, not just his fellow officers but also his family and the people he grew up with, frankly even the town. It takes a man of serious integrity to navigate this path and it takes a writer of serious ability to make Danny something more than a cardboard cutout of a hero. He comes across as very real.

The more I think about this book, I'd call that its biggest triumph. There are many triumphs here, from the impactful action to the treatment of Native American issues via the depth of characters as deep into the supporting cast as the fascinating Dortmund twins. I should call out the dialogue too, because it's impressively natural. That applies as much to romantic dialogue between Danny and Kristin as the far more desperate dialogue between Johnathan and his first victim who wants out of the precarious situation she finds herself in.

In many ways, Danny and Johnathan are two sides of the same coin. One is capable, hardworking and diligent, as well as gentle, decent and caring. The other is largely inept, lazy and careless, as well as vicious, twisted and sociopathic. It's rather interesting to look at them as the two ends of the character spectrum in play here and try to figure out where everyone else we meet might fit, then factor in who they work for. The result is more than a little worrying and it would carry over into future books, should Mariotte write further Danny Mansfield books.

And, while I have no inside knowledge that he might, it seems like a good possibility. There's one point here where he namedrops a character in such a way that it seemed likely that he'd written about him before. I duly looked up Russ Temple and found that he's the lead in a trilogy of novels from Rough Edges Press called 'Major Crimes Squad: Phoenix'. According to Mariotte's website, is "temporarily out of print, but returning in early 2026, bigger and better than ever!" I'm guessing but that would suggest to me that Crystal Lake Publishing may be bringing those out soon. I hope so. They're a good fit and this deserves to grow into more than a spinoff from an existing series. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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