The last voice you hear, by Mick Herron

 

I seem to have come in in the second in a three-part mystery series, but one doesn’t need to have read the first one to enjoy both the book and the interesting main character.  Oxford Private investigator Zoe Boehm has some violence and loss in her past and is more or less just pegging out her life.  When asked to investigate what might have happened to a friend’s personal assistant, who fell to her death in the subway, she is, of course, somewhat suspicious of the boyfriend the spinsterish woman had recently begun seeing.  This case will eventually overlap with the suicide of a 12-year-old she came across when he was eight and a budding juvenile delinquent, and the death of a cop-killer who has escaped justice.  But more ominously, she may be being stalked herself by the mysterious boyfriend.  Be warned that you may have several old Motown hits permanently lodged in your head if you read this novel.  And this may be the only mystery you read with ostriches in it.  285 pp.