‘Fatal Games’: Police procedural proves dark, yet poorly written

'Fatal Games” has some flaws, but none of them are fatal. Mari Hannah's fourth mystery featuring Kate Daniels (the first I have read) is a suspenseful read featuring a driven, determined protagonist. The book, newly published in the United States after publication in the United Kingdom last year under a different title, finds Daniels and her Murder Investigation Team looking for a villain who buried his victims years ago and years apart.

By and large, Hannah handles some of the tricky aspects of series fiction well. It's clear many of these characters have shared history, and that history is sometimes sketched on the page to help the reader joining the series late. On occasion, I felt a bit confused, but the key details were there.

Two stories, which the reader knows from the start are likely to intertwine, unfold in alternating chapters. In one, Daniels investigates the murders on the Northumberland coast of England; in the other, a vicious sex offender due to be released from a nearby prison causes panic with his unpredictable behavior and obsession with Emily McCann, the staff psychologist. Hannah unspools her linked stories with a good sense of pacing.

Hannah's prose is sometimes awkwardly or weakly constructed. Consider this line, designed to shock the reader into the realization that a villain is stirring: 'Which was a little unfortunate because the patient in the bed was awake and watching her.”

Nevertheless, 'Fatal Games” is likely to appeal to those who like their police procedurals dark and atmospheric.