A pretty okay read for me - I was looking for a procedural that didn’t focus solely on cops, given how they tend to propagandize them. I didn’t connect with any of the characters except Judge Dawson (and that was only because she’s a shadowy hyper-competent side character that doesn’t require excessive depth to be cool and aloof).  

To the credit of the author, the story-telling does draw you in, but the “bad guy” is such a nonentity that it didn’t create enough tension. He says maybe a handful of words the entire time and we never see his perspective. I think there’s too much attention paid in the narrative to how he looks (scarred and damaged by a genetic disorder) and not enough about his actions and motivations once discovered. The cannibalism angle the lead detective spends so much page space on as a rationale for the crimes is almost entirely dropped once they actually find him. He somehow manages to fade into the background during the court scenes which are solely about his competence to stand trial. I think the author got too invested in showing the complex relationships that exist between prosecutor, defense and judge in a court circuit to focus on anything else.