Posted Dec. 20, 2015 @ 12:01 am

Peter James breaks new ground in his bone-chilling “You Are Dead.” That’s because this 11th entry in the superb, Great Britain-based Detective Superintendent Roy Grace series ups the ante by adding a Jeffery Deaver/Thomas Harris element to his stalwart storytelling.

Specifically, old bodies from the past are turning up, eerily timed to coincide with the discovery of bodies left by a serial killer. The ever-intrepid Grace’s investigation reveals the jaw-dropping connection between the two, even as the clock ticks down on the life of a kidnapped young woman soon to become the killer’s next victim.

In his latest, James swaps the mundane for the macabre, nuance for noir. He’s always excelled at making the British crime novel accessible, but with “You Are Dead” he has fashioned is a tour de force of a police procedural that, at its heart, is a full-bore, mind-numbing psychological thriller. The ending suggests we haven’t seen the last of the killer, and I can’t wait for more Roy Grace and Peter James.