Prodigal Son [Paperback] McCullough, Colleen

Carmine Delmonico's back, and Holloman, Connecticut is about to get messy. April 1969: the Captain of Detectives has his hands full with two unconnected cases that couldn't be more different. First, there's the Dodo — a serial killer with a taste for young women and an MO that's as calculating as it is brutal. Then there's the Glass Teddy Bear case, a murder at Chubb University that drags Delmonico into campus politics, academic egos, and a victim nobody seems to have liked. McCullough, best known for *The Thorn Birds*, proves she's equally sharp with procedural crime fiction. She layers forensic detail with the social tensions of the late '60s, and Delmonico is a lead worth following — methodical, principled, and utterly unsentimental. If you like character-driven mysteries with period texture and a body count, you're in the right place.