Head Cases
PAR BOOK 1
John McMahon
Minotaur Pub
Jan 28th, 2025
Head Cases by John McMahon is a police procedural with quirky characters. Each has their own set of skills from being able to solve puzzles, a mathematician, weapons expert, computer analyst, and a career FBI bureaucrat.
“I wanted to write something that looks like the people of today. I was challenged to write something different. I thought of Gardner who thinks a little differently and works at the FBI. His mom’s character came about early. She is a forensic psychologist. I always have written in the first person, including with this book.”
The plot has a murder victim’s DNA a match to a serial killer who was presumed dead. Gardner Camden is a member of the FBI’s Patterns and Recognition team (PAR) and has a history with the vigilante’s first victim, Ross Tignon. Camden suspected Tignon of murdering three people in Florida a decade earlier. Camden was sent to try to recognize if the body is indeed Tignon who he believed had died in a fire seven years ago. Through the investigation, the PAR team realizes the serial killer had not died in the fire, but instead moved to Texas, where another serial killer caught up with him. The cat and mouse game starts when another serial killer is found dead. Although the PAR team usually works behind the scenes and below the radar on cold cases, they are thrust into the spotlight as they race against time to find the elusive killer as the bodies start to pile up.
The team consists of FBI Agent Gardner Camden, an analytical genius with an affinity for puzzles; Cassie Pardo able to recreate crime scenes in her head; Jo Harris a born hunter with a gun, Richie Brancato a prodigy from the Academy and Frank Roberts, their boss.
“I wrote PAR as a group of people who can solve puzzles that others could not. Frank Roberts, the boss, found these genius misfits living in different settings. He put them in the Jacksonville FBI to solve cold cases. They all have different personalities. Head cases is a derogatory statement about them.”
“They do not interact with people well. Together they form a superhero, each with a different skill set. Gardner does not have a written diagnosis but is socially awkward. I did not want to put a label on him. He is an analytical genius with a sharp and vivid memory who specializes in puzzles, patterns, and decoding enigmas. Jo is the Olympian level shooter who is a real smart aleck. Cassie is a mathematician by trade, the closest to Gardner. She has a particular way of speaking. Richie is a rookie, fresh out of the Academy. Frank is the boss and shields them from the politics. He is a profiler by trade.”
Roberts has chosen Gardner to lead the hunt for the killer, taking him out of his comfort zone. The suspect begins to taunt Camden, calling him, threatening his family, leaving cryptic clues on the bodies, and wanting to be referred to as “God”, instead Camden calls him “Mad Dog.” The team comes to believe that the murderer has privileged information about unsolved serial killer cases and suspect that someone in the FBI is involved.
Readers look forward that the next book will go into detail about the team’s backstory. In the next book the team must solve a case where there are very little patterns and will come out early next year. He is also writing another book, outside this series, where it will be the first time he writes in the third person, a psychological horror. Plus, another book that will be written in the first person from five points of views of a family.
