Head Cases – John McMahon (Audio Narrator – Will Damon)

Head Cases is one of my favorite books this year and it is coming out in January 2025. I read the audio version with excellent narrator Will Damon presenting.Gardner Camden and his colleagues in the Patterns and Recognition (PAR) unit are FBI agents who each have committed some petty faux pas that landed them in a lousy geographic location. They get called in when brilliant but not conventional minds are needed. Gardner’s lives in his head and is very poor at recognizing social and emotional cues from others. His psychiatrist mother raised her “different” boy with love, allowing him to explore the many things that profoundly interested him. The head of the unit is Frank. Then, there is Shooter, whose nickname speaks for itself. Having listened to audio, I’m suddenly blank on the mathematician’s name. She definitely flirts a bit with Gardner and her math skillls make them somewhat alike, although her social skills are just fine. I also forget the name of the weapons buy. But there are an amazing ensemble cast and a lot of fun. Rounding out their group is Richie, first in his class at Quantico, who unaccountably wants to be assigned to PAR. Most newbies want to be in a high crime area performing high profile work. Not in the backwoods with a bunch of disgraced agents who are called on for only the most confusing of cases. One could say that the unit’s nickname, the “Head Cases” has many layers: a bit “off”; each brilliant; each clever…

When the novel opens, there is a death out west. The body is identified as that of a serial killer who Gardner chased after with his former partner until the man died in a house fire. Oops. He did not die. PAR is assigned to field work! As they begin to investigate the morbid scene and to get their arms around the dead guy having been alive, more murders that seem to be related crop up. How were these people connected and what is the killer’s reason for obviously involving PAR? Is the killer too a head case? Will he keep ahead of the unit to their end? They are definitively at their last stop in the FBI. This is a police procedural, a special unit story and a thriller at times. It is fascinating in its construction, the weaving of the characters, the perfect red herrings to the end and entertaining the whole time. I am seriously interested in this stand alone novel becoming a series. It is set up to win! I highly recommend Head Cases.