A grotesquely burned corpse found in a city park is a troubling mystery for Beijing detective Li Yan. Yan, devoted to his career as a means of restoring the respect his family lost during the Cultural Revolution, needs outside help if he is to break the case.

Cast Iron was compelling reading. I read in long spurts, stopping only when my eyes could no longer focus on my iPad (much less forgiving than my Paperwhite). I really wanted to know what was going to happen next, who was in danger, who might not survive this story, and of course what would be Enzo’s fate. Everything was up in the air for much of this book. Joining him in his search for answers are an assortment of friends, family and professionals within the police community at large, though often he is on his own. There is usually a beautiful woman nearby as Enzo seems powerless to resist the charms of a pretty face (or sensuous walk). In this final book of the series, the usual elements are present but with some changes that allow completion of various plot lines. He is nearing the end of the challenge but now is increasingly under threat from the unknown person who tried to kill him twice before. Obviously he must be close to something important....but what?

Cast Iron

A weeping killer deposits the unconscious body of twenty-year-old Lucie Martin, her head wrapped in a blue plastic bag, into the waters of a picturesque lake. Detective Li Yan senses a conspiracy surrounding the fatalities, and finds a female athlete willing to talk. But she will only trust one person: Li's fiancée, Margaret Campbell.

It was eight years after the grisly discovery and forensic expert Enzo Macleod was in Paris, continuing his quest to solve the cold cases he’d started on some years prior. The search for the killer of the young girl who had gone missing in 1989 would consume him in its usual way. But he had no idea how dangerous it would become, both for him and his loved ones. The evidence was sparse; the conclusions the police had originally reached didn’t sit well with Enzo. No one can create a more eloquently written suspense novel than Peter May.' New York Journal of Books Western France - now May's own stamping ground - is as much a character in the book as the Hebrides were in his formidable Isle of Lewis sequence * Guardian * Cast Iron is book six in the Enzo file series. Forensic expert Enzo Macleod made a bet to solve cold cases that journalist Roger Raffin has written about in a book, which includes the murder of Roger's wife Marie. In this, the sixth book is the murder of nineteen-year-old Lucie Martin that Enzo is trying to solve. However, it's a difficult case, and it gets personal when someone goes after someone Enzo loves. In 1989 a killer dumps the body of Lucie Martin into a lake in a picturesque area of western France, fourteen years later that body is revealed and in 2012 the case remains unsolved. In 2012 Enzo is well on to his way to winning his bet of solving the cases’ in the Raffin’s book of unsolved murders, but the murder of Lucie Martin seems to have him stumped.

Summary

I really enjoyed this book. I place it in the 'couldn't put it down' category, and 'more please' Mr May.