Spencer Kope returns readers to the Special Tracking Unit of the FBI in Shadows of the Dead.

Magnus Craig is known as “Steps” but only a few people know of his ability to see shine, a color stream of the essence created by people, varying in color and intensity depending on the length of time they’ve been in a certain place. The origin of this synesthesia is in itself interesting and creative. How he deals with it with special glasses adds to this touch and creates empathy for a man whose special sight is a daily bombardment of colors and senses without the glasses.

The strong opening in this third outing (Collecting the Dead, Whispers of the Dead)creates immediate interest: tracking a man after he’s fled in the woods after a police chase to a remote cabin in the woods brings them information about his partner in crime, a man he calls OK for Onion King.

Then a young woman is found in the trunk of his car, a woman he calls Eight. When she regains consciousness, her information is telling: she was abducted by someone different from the man who left her in the woods; and more critically, she was not the first but the eighth victim.

Steps and his partner, Jimmy, will trace the villain in real time and though the dark web, a race against time for the unknown abducted victims still being held. For is this young woman was Eight, where are the first seven?

Kope, a working crime analyst, brings a huge sense of reality to the plot through profiling and other detection methods from his own knowledge base. Yet he’s smart to weave characters who will capture the readers’ attention, especially Steps, even as he takes them on a wild ride.

The unpredictable plot, as well as the easy camaraderie and dialogue between Jimmy and Steps add to make this a wholly satisfying read.