Convinced that his published profile helped The Meat Man strike one last time, he vanishes into the isolation of Oregon’s high country. A year later, his self-imposed exile ends when he learns that his wife’s death may not have been what it seemed.

Returning to Portland, he is determined to unravel the tangled web behind the killings and confront his past. He plunges deep into the city's underbelly, uncovering clues that draw him closer to the truth and leads to murder, conspiracy and betrayal.

A dark psychological crime thriller, THE SHATTERED MAN is the second book in Tom Towslee's Northwest Noir series.

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The room felt like a sauna and smelled of sweat and takeout Thai food. Guys in cargo shorts and Pink Floyd T-shirts stood behind television cameras at the back of the room. In front of them, two dozen indignant reporters shouted angry questions, usually two or three at a time. Half of them worked for legitimate news organizations. The rest had websites, X accounts, or referred to themselves as “influencers.” Sitting cross-legged on the floor were a half dozen still photographers, their SLRs aimed like sniper rifles at the discouraged, disgruntled, and disheveled figure of District Attorney Miller Devlin.

With his loose tie and wrinkled shirt, he looked every bit like what he was—under siege by heat and humiliation, capable of doing little more than repeating shopworn talking points over the din of protesters outside the building chanting, “Hey, hey, Miller. Find the killer.”

The questions came like grenades.

“How many more women do you think will be killed before you catch the Meat Man?”

“Do you think the killer is making fools out of the police?”

“Let’s be honest, you don’t have the slightest idea who this killer is, do you?”

“The investigation is continuing,” Devlin said. “I have every confidence that we are close to an arrest.”

The answer landed flat. The quote was so familiar no one even bothered to write it down.

In the last two weeks, seven women had been killed in brutal and identical ways. With no suspects and no leads, all Devlin could do was wince at the shouted questions, try to ignore the protesters outside, and point to a whiteboard behind him with a hastily scrawled website address, an 800 number, and an X handle.

“Anyone with information that could help us find the killer is encouraged to contact us,” Devlin said. It was another cringe-worthy answer.

“These guys couldn’t find shit in a birdcage,” one camera operator muttered to another.

Dr. Alex Windsor squeezed farther into the shadows of a corner near a door with an exit sign over it. The scene of reporters sensing blood and the DA looking like cornered prey was hard to watch. Windsor had done what he could to help Devlin, which took some doing. The DA was an overconfident, inexperienced lawyer six years out of a second-rate law school who was elected the county’s chief prosecutor because no one else worthy of the job wanted it. Windsor only agreed to help him out of a sense of civic duty and a career-long fascination with serial killers. Together, they came up with a plan that left Windsor uneasy, realizing that lawyers don’t work well with others—except other lawyers.

After the third murder and confident an arrest was imminent, Devlin naively and eagerly assumed the role of the investigation’s point man. Eventually, everybody else—the chief of police, county sheriff, state police superintendent, and the mayor—took one step backward. Even the state and U.S. flags seemed to have retreated to the corner of the room to cower out of camera view. Now, he was alone to issue more empty vows to find the killer dubbed “The Meat Man.”

Tom Towslee