Anthony J. Quinn’s latest novel, The Listeners, is the first in a new crime series featuring a new protagonist—young wife and mother, Carla Herron, only months out of police training as a Detective Sergeant—and a new brooding landscape, the darkly forested borderlands of Scotland. While the tale is a departure from his Celcius Daly series, Quinn’s newest offering has all the hallmarks of the author’s storytelling and literary prowess.

When a patient at the local psychiatric hospital confesses to a grisly crime that no one is even certain has taken place, the police are called in only as a formality since the patient is under constant supervision in a secure ward. But the lines between fact and fantasy are soon blurred. When the patient’s confession leads her to a woman’s severed head deep in the Scottish wilderness, Carla Herron becomes embroiled in untangling the mysteries surrounding Deepwell psychiatric hospital and the secretive, cult-like society of doctors at its center. With an increasing obsession of her own, Carla is drawn into a dark web of mental illness, manipulation, professional betrayal, and psychoanalytic rivalry.

Quinn’s prose is nothing short of brilliant. While this is a police procedural fully within the crime novel genre, Quinn’s writing style is more in keeping with literary fiction. That said, the author still has a taut, compelling plot and a mystery that is as layered as it is chilling. To my mind, with his poetic, visual, and visceral style, Quinn is unparalleled when it comes to writing literary psychological thrillers. The forests, lochs, and psychiatric hospital are painted in ominous, foreboding strokes. While there is no social commentary as there is in his Daly series, the wild Scottish borderlands come alive in vividly drawn, almost gothic descriptions.

The protagonist is a young woman torn between her domestic duties and the raw, primal awakening of motherhood that led her to abandon her life as a school teacher and pursue police work. The juxtaposition of familial roles reads authentically, and Carla’s struggle with whether she is making the right choice but insistence—perhaps even obsession—on following the course she has set for herself makes for an intriguing, multidimensional character. The resolution of the mystery and the reveal of the culprit in the end reflect her status as a new investigator and leave her room to grow as a detective over the course of the series.

This is a cerebral, intellectual read with all of the haunting poignancy, gripping language, disquieting mystery, and striking settings I have come to expect from Anthony Quinn. The Listeners takes the reader to the rugged, deeply atmospheric landscape of the human mind and the dangerous, malleable labyrinth of memory and suggests that oft times, silence speaks louder than words.

Highly recommended for fans of crime fiction written in a literary, intellectual style.