Beneath Her Skin: A Kes Morris File (Kes Morris series, 1)

A literary crime thriller from a mysterious new voice in Atlantic fiction

She knew her process. Knew the itch in her nerves. The cold hardness creeping in. She was pulling on the killer's skin too fast. Something wild flickered across her heart. When she fully donned it, there wouldn't be room for anyone else but the killer and her.

When a small east coast town falls prey to a series of shocking murders, city homicide detective Kes Morris is called in to lead the case with the aid of the local precinct. As usual, she's the only woman in the room, and must draw on the lessons passed down by her detective father, a furtive and dangerous practice of going deep inside a killer's mind to put on their skin.
What Kes uncovers is a web of gruesome crimes reaching back decades, and a town that may have been complicit. With a reputation of being hard, relentless and unbending to authority, she finds herself on the hunt for a killer seeking brutal retribution, someone who takes sadistic pleasure in the death and wants their work seen. The farther she follows the trail, the more the line blurs between guilt and innocence, predator and prey.
An atmospheric thriller with complex characters, Beneath Her Skin signals the emergence of a bold new voice in crime fiction and a dark and thrilling new series.

This C.S. Porter's debut novel. A solitary writer who lives near the Atlantic Ocean, it is rumoured he or she was once involved in crime investigation; that Porter suffered an immense personal loss; that they came from US or UK, or grew up in these parts. Age unknown. The author has never been interviewed.