FIVE

Archer, an Austrian writer of teen novels, has created a series of gruesome killings in her Salzberg-based first thriller for adults. 

Beatrice Kaspary and her partner, Florin Wenninger, are called to handle the body of a young woman found in a cow pasture. The physician on scene believes she was pushed from a cliff, but that’s not as interesting to the detectives as the series of numbers and symbols tattooed on the bottoms of her feet. They determine the numbers are GPS coordinates and, after identifying the victim, follow them to a wooded area where they find a geocache holding a shrink-wrapped human hand along with a cryptic note and another set of coordinates. As Bea wearily fights with her former husband, Achim, over the way she cares for their two children, she also finds herself increasingly drawn to her partner, who already has a serious girlfriend. Meanwhile, more and more body parts surface as the pair follow the geocaching clues in their attempt to find the killer before more people wind up dead. Though Florin refers to Bea’s amazing deductive powers, she shows very little of them in this well-constructed if slow-moving story. Even when the bodies start piling up, Bea and Florin tend to pack it in and head home at the end of the workday. Also, Bea comes across as very fragile, almost delicate—not the type one would expect to find working homicides. The translation seems stilted in places, but the overall story is solid, and Archer ties everything up nicely at the end.

Though Bea and Florin often seem to be phoning it in, Archer makes up for their lack of energy with an inventive plot.