Freezing

August 29, 2011
Koff’s intriguing mystery debut introduces two strong women, forensic anthropologists Jayne Hall and Steelie Lander, who have formed Agency Thirty-two One in Los Angeles to do forensic profiles of missing persons (or “mispers”), “matching them with unidentified bodies or living Does.” FBI special agent Scott Houston is quick to call on their expertise when a freeway accident spills body parts from a van. Houston and partner Eric Ramos think the body parts may be linked to an open serial killer case they pursued in Atlanta. Koff, a forensic anthropologist who detailed her harrowing experiences in Rwanda and Bosnia in her memoir The Bone Woman, paints a vivid picture of the effect of those losses on the victims’ loved ones. The costs are heavy for those who try to help, but so are the rewards. Koff relies too much on coincidence, but her passion for the problem of “mispers” more than compensates. Readers will look forward to the sequel.

November 1, 2011
A macabre car accident kicks off a forensic investigation that leads from the West Coast to the East and beyond. No matter how drunk you are, nothing sobers you up like the sight of body parts falling out of the van you just hit. When forensic anthropologists Jayne Hall and Steelie Lander, missing-persons profilers and partners in Agency 32/1, are called to the scene by Scott Houston, the old friend who's recently been moved from Atlanta to the Los Angeles FBI, they make an even more gruesome discovery. The body parts in question not only belong to several different women, but they're just thawing; the van driver, whoever it was, must have been keeping them in a freezer. With that, the search is on for a coast-to-coast murderer who may just be the same man Houston failed to catch in Atlanta, a practiced killer of prostitutes. Soon enough Houston and his partner Eric Ramos find the van in nearby Maricopa County, but not, courtesy of a whopping coincidence, the killer they're seeking. It looks as if all roads may lead to Atlanta after all—unless they lead back even further, to the wake of the Rwanda genocide a decade ago. Forensic anthropologist and memoirist Koff (The Bone Woman, 2005) isn't much of a stylist, but if you thrill when you hear that "this is where Steelie does the odontograms and the biometrics and we digitize relevant photos," the promised series may be your meat.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

November 1, 2011
This impressive mystery debut rests on a fascinating real-life premise. Forensic anthropologists Jayne Hall and Steelie Lander run a nonprofit resource center, Agency 32/1, dedicated to identifying nameless bodies and thereby providing closure for those who have been waiting years to learn what happened to their missing loved ones. When various unidentified body parts fall from a van on an L.A. freeway, an FBI agent working off the books asks Jayne and Steelie for help. So begins a hunt for a serial killer the FBI doesn't want to admit exists. Koff, a forensic anthropologist who worked to identify bodies in Rwanda, Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo (and is the author of the acclaimed memoir, The Bone Woman, 2004), brings a wealth of expertise to this remarkably detailed exploration of a heartbreakingly sad but strangely humanizing calling that places its practitioners halfway between the living and the dead, helping to work a link that transcended time and space. Koff's narrative skills need a bit more sharpening, but that will surely come as this series develops. One of the most promising new crime series to appear this year.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)